Vessel
by RiikiTikiTavi
Summary: The Akatsuki need a vessel for the next jinchuuriki. Sakura isn't going to cooperate.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: Vessel, Part 1**

Title: Vessel  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: Hard T? R-ish?  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

A/N: I hardly ever do author's notes beyond the bare minimum, but I'd like to make it clear there is no rape in this fic. It's more along the lines of a fluffy forbidden romance. If forbidden romances had fluff, that is. And a sociopath as the romantic lead.

I could not figure out what to do about that little grunt thing Deidara does at the end of his sentences. It gets translated all sorts of weird ways in scanlations, and in the anime it sounds like a combination of "-ka" and "hmmm." I decided to go with "eh" and "huh" and "okay", and use lots of sentences that are statements but spoken like questions.

I'm taking some liberties with the Akatsuki's motivations for the sake of the story.

For manga followers, the timeline diverges about 361. Spoilers abound up until that point, and maybe a bit beyond. This story was originally published circa 2009 (wow, that long ago?) and quite a few things have changed in the Naruto universe. Think of this tale as an exercise in nostalgia.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 1**

One subject had never come up among the Leaf shinobi forced to counter the Akatsuki's pursuit of the jinchuuriki.

It wasn't that they couldn't deal with it. It was that they weren't completely aware of the Akatsuki's motives. They knew the enemy was hunting Naruto because he was the container for the fox demon, they knew other containers had been captured, the symbionts forcefully extracted. Only one of the jinchuuriki had survived the extraction process, and that only because someone else had willingly given up her life to preserve his. There was some speculation that an attempt to create another jinchuuriki was underway, although most thought the freed demons were going to be used to start wars that the Akatsuki could use to their advantage. No real facts supported either theory. All the Leaf shinobi could do as the other jinchuuriki fell to the Akatsuki was protect Naruto.

No one seemed to consider that, if they were trying to create a jinchuuriki, the Akatsuki would need a vessel.

And the vessels for the demons embedded into jinchuuriki always started out as babies.

The Leader chose three Akatsuki as potential progenitors, all because they possessed bloodline limits that would aid the nascent jinchuuriki until it could protect itself.

If any of the males ('men' was a little questionable in this instance) objected, they would not verbally express their doubts. The Leader was not someone to be opposed.

Besides, they all were after the same thing. This part of the process, while inherently seedy, was accepted as a necessary evil.

At least, intellectually the Leader accepted it as a necessary evil. Several individuals within the Akatsuki, however, might object on religious or moral grounds to their own personal participation. The goal was the same, but the Akatsuki was a diverse group. Not everyone agreed on the path to the goal. That played a large part in the narrowing down process. The bloodline limits were important, true, but the Leader believed these final males were individuals who would follow through if chosen and even use force if necessary.

It might well be necessary. The thought was distasteful to him, but the goal was more important than the methods involved in reaching it. That was another reason for narrowing the list down to several males instead of just one. The Leader hoped that the captive might be more willing to cooperate if presented with the illusion of choice.

She had given no indication so far that "cooperation" was a possibility. He considered himself a fair man, so he explained to her a week ago, clearly and without undue threats (or promises) what was expected of her. Her immediate response was "Hell, no!" She did not appear afraid, just very, very angry.

The Leader did not blame her for her anger. It was simply irrelevant. She possessed extraordinary chakra skills he hoped would be passed on to the new jinchuuriki (along with the bloodline limit of whomever she picked), and her presence would force Naruto, the last of the known living jinchuuriki, to seek them out. Two birds, as it were.

"Pein, he's arrived."

He nodded to his partner. "Then we don't need to keep her or the others waiting any longer."

She frowned and turned her head away.

"It's necessary," he reminded her.

"I don't like it."

"Nor I. I am hoping it won't come to violence."

"If it does, I would like to drug her. It would be easier on them both."

He smiled slightly. His partner was assuming it would be the Uchiha, who had not refused when told of the mission but made it clear he did not care for this assignment. It would make sense if she picked him. He was from the captive's village and he was the older brother of a missing-nin that she once trained with. Uchiha had said flatly that force was a last resort. He would kill the captive without hesitation, lock her in her own mind and torture her for days, but his own personal fastidiousness drew the line at other types of abuse.

The Leader was not in any particular hurry for the child. In fact, it would be a year before conditions were proper for using the baby in the sealing ritual, so he did not want her pregnant immediately. Those conditions would become less favorable with the passing of another year, but the illusion of time might work the same way as the illusion of choice. He didn't want this to be more unpleasant than it had to be. He _was_ a civilized man.

If she did select the Uchiha, hopefully the young man could persuade her, or use his sharingan to subdue her without undue violence (although that suggestion had invoked one of those cool stares that indicated stark disapproval). Drugs could have a negative effect on the fetus. "We'll see what happens," the Leader finally responded.

His partner's mouth tightened, but she nodded.

The girl was just a tool.

They both accepted that.

* * *

Deidara was not happy.

He usually wasn't unless he was in the process of blowing something up, so perhaps it should be specified that he was even less happy than usual.

Nearly a week ago a summons had come. He and Tobi were to drop everything and report to a compound hidden in the unincorporated wilderness east of Sound. Since they had been in the western-most corner of the Earth Country at the time, they were about as far away as they could possibly get. Even though most of the journey had been atop one of his clay birds, he was tired and cranky.

And everyone at the compound was giving him really, really strange looks.

When mind-controlled ninjas kept looking at you oddly, you _knew_ something was up.

He barely had time to suck down a meal (he had hardly eaten in the last week, because stopping for anything when the Leader called was akin to suicide) before Itachi Uchiha came looking for him.

The Uchiha leaned in the doorway of the small, functional kitchen, ignoring Deidara's scowl. He was wearing the Akatsuki's dark robe with its characteristic pattern of red clouds, unfastened at the neck so that his face could be clearly seen. It made Deidara very conscious that he had been traveling at break-neck speed for a week, that his own robe was crumpled and stained, and that his hair (which he took some pride in) was flattened to his head with sweat and grime. "What?" he snarled between gulps of his miso soup. "I'm starving, okay?"

"The Leader wants to see you now," said the Uchiha with his usual calm and inflectionless intonation. "You should clean up."

Deidara slapped the bowl down, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. The improbable mouth on his palm briefly faced towards the Uchiha, its tongue wagging as if in mockery.

Not many people stuck out a tongue at Itachi Uchiha and lived, even if said tongue was on a hand rather than a face.

"What does it matter, eh?" demanded Deidara crossly. "He's not here, right? He can't smell me, and I don't care if _you_ can."

Head tilting to the side, the Uchiha made a non-committal sound.

Great. Even the most emotionless of the Akatsuki was looking at him oddly.

" _What?_ " snarled Deidara.

"I have a spare robe," said the Uchiha. "You should at least put that on."

Deidara shot him an incredulous glare. For the love of all that was holy (or unholy in his case), they were _ninjas_. They usually came back from a day at work splattered with fleshy body bits. The Leader wasn't going to _care_ that Deidara's cloak wasn't perfectly pressed, if he could even _tell_ that through the haze of astral projection. "What the hell do I need to get spruced up for, huh? He's just going to send me back out on this new mission."

The Uchiha blinked.

Which he never did. The sharingan seemed to have a "can't blink like a normal person" side effect.

"What's the hold-up?" rumbled a deep voice from the hallway. Deidara grimaced. _Oh, yeah, it needed only this…_

A tall figure loomed behind the Uchiha. Perfectly round, white-dominated eyes stared at Deidara from what seemed like a great height. Kisame's stature was such that he towered over his partner. "Eat fast or eat later, kid," he suggested in irritation. "We've got a meeting."

"He's objecting to — sprucing up, I believe he said."

Kisame shrugged. "Yeah? Well, he just got in, so a little dirt's to be expected."

The Uchiha's head cocked back slightly, not enough to look in the taller male's face, but enough to indicate which of the men in the room he was addressing. "Do you seriously want to give him an advantage because he looks like _that_?"

It was Deidara's turn to blink. He glanced down at himself, wondering what advantage (or disadvantage, as far as that went) could possibly come from a travel-rumbled robe and travel-matted hair. (Although the travel-matted hair did bother him. A lot.)

The effect the query had on Kisame, however, was electric. "Oh, _hell,_ no!" he snarled. Striding into the room, he seized Deidara by the collar of his not-perfectly-pressed robe and pulled. The chair he had been sitting in crashed sideways as Kisame physically lifted Deidara into the air. Instinctively Deidara wrapped his hands around the other male's wrist; just as instinctively the teeth in his palms bit down hard. Kisame winced, but he had a tough hide. He just gave Deidara a shake and snapped at Itachi, "You get the shower going. No _way_ is this guy going to get out of this by being skanky!"

"What the _hell_ –" started Deidara in alarm. He had seen strange things during his time with the Akatsuki, experiences that would give Orochimaru nightmares, but being _bathed by force—_?

The Uchiha leaned over and flicked the facet over the sink. "Just run his head under here. It'll have to do."

Any further questions or comments Deidara might have uttered were literally drowned out by having his head forced under water. One hand flailed towards the bag at his waist that held his special exploding clay, but Itachi seized him by the wrist before, to Deidara's complete horror, the Uchiha began to _scrub his hair_. With _dishwashing soap._

It was a good thing his head was being held face-down in the sink so that the water muffled his opinions on what was currently happening to him. Even seasoned shinobi would have been shocked by the words coming out of Deidara's mouth.

"Enough," the Uchiha finally said. Kisame grunted and pulled Deidara, sputtering and coughing, upright by the hair.

"He's still a mess," grumbled Kisame, sticking his face far too close to Deidara's and examining him.

"Let go of his hair," instructed Itachi, "and _you_ — don't move." This was said as the Uchiha cupped his fingers around Deidara's cheeks.

Deidara uttered a sound that was (he insisted to himself) _not_ a squeak as he stared, horrified, into those sharingan eyes. Fortunately the eyes weren't doing that _thing_ they did to trap the unwary. Instead steady warmth came from the fingers the Uchiha threaded into Deidara's hair, and after a few seconds Itachi nodded and said, "Done."

" _With what, huh?"_ screamed Deidara, who was almost at his wits end.

"Your hair is dry," the Uchiha blandly informed him.

Startled, Deidara pulled one hand free from Kisame's restraining grasp and ran it through his fine, long blond hair. It was, indeed, dry.

 _So that's how his hair always looks normal even after a week in the field, eh? He's his own walking blow dryer._

"He hasn't been informed of the mission," the Uchiha continued as he shrugged out of his own cloak. "Get that off him — that's why," he continued as Kisame grabbed handfuls of Deidara's cloak and pulled, "he's in here eating instead of getting ready."

" _Getting ready for freakin' what, huh?"_

The Uchiha threw his own cloak around Deidara's shoulders. "Oi, are you going in like _that_?" exclaimed Kisame. Underneath Itachi wore a loose-fitting white top and dark trousers, making the resemblance to his younger brother Sasuke suddenly very marked. "Man, you're going to get picked for sure—unless that's what you want, of course…"

Fingers dug into Deidara's shoulders. _"It is not,"_ hissed the Uchiha.

There was a beat of silence.

"It is not," said the Uchiha in his usual emotions-do-not-touch-me tone as he smoothed out the creases he had just pressed into Deidara's new, fresh, clean robe. "There's no time left, we're already late. This will have to do." There was a final automatic stroke across Deidara's shoulders before the Uchiha turned away, striding towards the hallway beyond the kitchen.

Kisame prodded Deidara. "Get moving."

"Wait, okay?" said Deidara in a faint voice. He had been staring directly into Itachi's face during that brief loss of control, and he had no doubt that the Uchiha's revulsion was real. The Uchiha paused in the kitchen's doorway; Kisame snorted but stopped trying to make Deidara move. "What's the mission?"

Kisame made a noise in his throat that didn't sound like a happy one.

The Uchiha slowly turned his head. The sharingan weren't swirling, but being on the receiving end of that red-eyed glare was still unnerving.

"We have to impregnate a woman," said the Uchiha coldly.

" _What?"_ Deidara gasped. "Why—?"

In all truth he was so busy incredulously grappling with the implications of Itachi's flat statement that he wasn't sure how that second sentence was going to end, but the sharingan _did_ begin to swirl which startled Deidara into silence as he wondered if he should clench his eyes closed or if it was already too late. "Why do you think?" parried the Uchiha, his voice flat and unemotional.

Deidara dropped his gaze (glad that he _could_ drop his gaze, because it meant he wasn't caught in a genjutsu, or at least that's what he _hoped_ it meant) to his own hand. The teeth in the palm gnashed back at him.

"Yeah," he said bitterly after a minute, "dumb question, huh? Fine. Let's get this over with."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Vessel, Part 2**

Title: Vessel  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: T  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.  
Disclaimer: (Yes, that thing I always forget because it just seems silly to think anyone would believe I _own_ any of the characters I write about in fanfiction) I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 2**

To say that Sakura was angry was an understatement.

To say that she was upset didn't begin to express the horror she felt at her predicament.

To say that she was going to abso-freakin'-lutely _castrate_ any sonovabitch-Akatsuki- _jerk_ that came _near_ her was beginning, just beginning, to plumb the depths of her fury.

She couldn't even wrap her mind around the concept, presented so calmly by their so-called "Leader." (Sakura had a few names for him, all right, but he was unmoved by her swearing.) This was _her_ body they were talking about, _her_ potential child they were –

And then her mind just shut down, because she was too young and too busy and there was a war and just too much was happening to be considering children.

Let alone considering _fathers_ (men she had fought against, who had tried to kill her in the course of their insane mission to collect the jinchuuriki) for those children.

It would be her choice, the Leader assured her in a reasonable tone. And there was no hurry; she could take her time to get comfortable with the father of her child before _doing_ anything.

Except he kept calling her potential child 'the vessel,' which as far as Sakura was concerned just punched one more hole in this sick façade of civility he insisted on maintaining.

She felt like punching a few holes in things herself, which brought her to her next problem.

They had drained her chakra. Not enough to kill her, but enough to make her _normal._ And it wasn't regenerating.

She wasn't sure how they had pulled this little trick off. Although there were chakra-inhibiting drugs they came with side effects that usually included lethargy, and Sakura had so much energy after a week in captivity that she was bouncing off the walls. She thought it might be related to the slim collar fitted around her neck, but she could find no trace of jutsu when she ran her fingers around it in an attempt to take it off.

Not that she would be able to sense jutsu without chakra.

Sighing, Sakura let her head fall onto her bent knees. She was sitting in the corner on the cold stone floor. Not that her accommodations were prison-like; no, not at all. It was an entire suite of rooms consisting of a bedroom, a sitting area with a small dining table, and a bathroom. There were throw-rugs and chairs and books on medical procedures, some of which were rare enough that reading them could almost take her mind off her predicament.

Almost.

Except that it took just a glance around the premises to remind her that she was a prisoner. There were no windows, no mirror she could break in the bathroom, no visible handle on the door leading to the hall. They had designed this cozy little place for _her_ ; the medical books alone were proof of that.

The door opened. It was surprisingly creaky for a door set in a prisoner's room within a top-secret enemy hide-out, but that was probably on purpose. It was hard to sneak out a door that made a racket whenever it was opened.

"Miss?"

It was one of the various support ninjas. He wore a forehead protector that indicated he was from the island nation of Water. It was not heavily scored out to indicate he was a missing-nin. Most likely he wasn't, at least not technically. The Akatsuki possessed an incredible technique that permitted mind-controlled ninjas to act so normally no one, including themselves, could tell they were under a jutsu until it was too late.

Sakura raised her head. "Here," she said wearily.

"It's time, miss."

Sakura closed her eyes and steeled herself. This _civilized_ farce had entered its next stage, and her depleted chakra meant she had to play along.

As long as she was alive, she had a chance. There were no second chances for the dead.

Standing, Sakura reached into the pouch at her belt. It had none of the usual weapons, no kunai or shuriken with which to protect herself.

But they had left her the gloves.

She pulled the tight leather on methodically, tugging the edges around her wrist on first one, then the other hand. Flexing her fingers, she felt the reassuring stretch of the leather across the back of her hands.

She had fought one of the Akatsuki to the death and won while wearing these gloves. Without access to her chakra, however, Sakura couldn't pretend to be in the same class as S-rank criminals.

Still, even lacking her chakra Sakura's basic martial arts skills remained. She fully intended on breaking the nose of her 'partner' in this debacle before being forced to submit.

The ninja stood by the door waiting for her to finish her preparations respectfully, making no attempt to hurry her along. There was even a hint of sympathy in his expression. When not under the mind-control jutsu, he was probably a decent person who would be appalled at his bit part in this fiasco.

She hoped he didn't remember this when he was released from the jutsu. Shinobi had enough guilt to deal with performing their regular assignments; he didn't need the extra weight from being unable to help her.

"I'm ready," Sakura said grimly.

* * *

There was nearly a scuffle outside the meeting room. Kisame insisted that Deidara take off his usual eyepiece ("That's for distance sighting, right? She's going to be right in front of us so ya don't need it") and the Uchiha couldn't stop trying to fix his hair for him.

It was as embarrassing as it was irritating.

"Just cut it out, okay?" snarled Deidara, slapping at Itachi's hands while at the same time unable to _believe_ he was slapping at Itachi's hands like a first level genin girl arguing with a rival over a boy they both liked in the schoolyard. "I can do it, okay?"

"It's tangled," pointed out the Uchiha in disapproval as he crossed his abused hands over his chest.

"It's _long_ and you didn't use conditioner!" huffed Deidara. "It'll look fine once I get it up!"

Kisame snickered. Deidara realized that was probably an unfortunate turn of phrase, considering.

Scowling, he finger-combed his hair into two sections then twisted his usual hairpiece around the top selection, forcing the reluctant (and unconditioned) strands into compliance. "There, see, it's fine now, eh?"

"Bangs," suggested Kisame.

The Uchiha reached out and tucked Deidara's bangs, which usually covered most of the left side of his face, behind the younger man's ear. It was a lot of hair and some of it still spilled back over his face, but Itachi stopped him when Deidara grimaced and try to free up the rest of his hair. "Let her see you," the Uchiha admonished quietly. He turned away as Deidara stood in flat-footed astonishment.

"Wait, wait!"

The Uchiha paused, just like he had in the kitchen. It was a novel experience for Deidara. The Uchiha usually didn't listen to anyone.

"What does the Leader—" Deidara started to say _expect of us_ but, really, once you were told you had to _impregnate_ someone, what further explanation was necessary? "What's the meeting for, hey?"

"She gets to choose," said the Uchiha flatly.

"One of us," clarified Kisame when Deidara just stared blankly.

" _What?_ Don't _we_ get a say—?!" Deidara cut himself off because the Uchiha was _looking_ at him with that ' _I'd kill you if I had time, and I may anyway if you irritate me further'_ look. It was a lot to read into a perfectly blank expression, but Deidara had years of practice. And Kisame wasn't laughing or chuckling, and Deidara knew if he glanced behind himself the water specialist wouldn't even be smirking. "Right," Deidara muttered, tipping his head to stare down at the floor. "My day for stupid questions, eh? Sorry."

A heavy hand came down on Deidara's shoulder. "Not a problem," said Kisame, a note of understanding in his voice that was possibly even more embarrassing than the Uchiha's obsession with Deidara's hair being just right.

"Let's go," said the Uchiha quietly as he reached for the door's latch.

* * *

She sat at a long wooden table exchanging polite small talk with the projected image of the Akatsuki's Leader as she waited for the door opposite her position to open. The set-up made it appear as if she were conducting interviews for a job vacancy.

The situation was as surreal to experience as it was to describe.

The Leader was actually inquiring if she had sufficient reading material, and was there anything else they could do to make her stay more comfortable? It was as if Sakura were here voluntarily. No, as if she were some honored guest rather than a conduit for their precious "vessel."

It was all so _normal_ that Sakura had little difficulty choking down the scream that was lodged deep in her throat. Screaming around the Leader would just be impolite.

Besides, she had done plenty of screaming (yelling, shouting, cursing at high volume; whatever one cared to call it) last week when he first informed her of the Akatsuki's plans for her. It hadn't changed his mind, and it only made her angry at her own loss of control.

She was a ninja, a good one, she had fought toe-to-toe with Sasori and won. She had been in more dire situations than this.

All she had to do was survive. The Akatsuki made long-term plans that took years to accomplish. The Leader had told her that they only expected to _detain_ her for three years at the most, as if that amount of time away from her friends and her village were a mild inconvenience to her. In all that time, though, _someone_ would _have_ to make a mistake, and Sakura would able to escape.

Then the door opened, and Sakura briefly reconsidered just how rude it would be to scream. Her fists clenched, fingers curling into her palms as the leather encasing her hands gave off a slow, creaking noise.

 _No screaming. Just observe._

The first man wasn't wearing the usual black Akatsuki robe. Instead he was garbed in a loose white shirt and dark pants that ended just below his knees. There was a glimpse of a netted undershirt; plain, practical sandals graced his feet.

Itachi Uchiha.

 _Makes a certain amount of sense,_ thought Sakura clinically. _We're from the same village, know the same people, my affection for his brother is common knowledge._

Itachi nodded at her politely and sketched a short bow towards his leader. He took up a position next to the door, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.

He looked _irritatingly_ like Sasuke. Attractive, aloof, indifferent.

 _No,_ thought Sakura. The _real_ Sasuke was annoying enough. She didn't need another Uchiha in her life, and any Uchiha babies she might produce in the future were not going to be fathered by the man who killed their grandparents.

Given the stress she was under, it was a calm, straight-forward analysis leading to dispassionate rejection of the candidate. Sakura was proud of herself.

She turned her attention to the next candidate, so tall he had to duck his head to fit under the doorframe.

Hoshigaki Kisame. That was just… _ew._

He inclined his head towards her as Itachi had, but it was accompanied by a smirk that made her skin crawl. Then he positioned himself to Itachi's left, standing straight instead of leaning, hands hanging loosely by his sides. His alert stance indicated that he didn't trust her, although the smirk never faded.

 _No. No, no and no._

Two rejections, although the second one was based more on pure physical revulsion than measured analysis. Sakura recalled that estimated membership in the Akatsuki ranged between seven and ten. Sasori was dead, Kakuzu was dead, and Hiden was more-or-less permanently indisposed. Had they replaced inactive members? Would she have to sit through this humiliating parade until the entire Akatsuki had been marched past her?

Sakura was fairly sure she was battling hysteria, and hysteria was close to winning. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she turned her attention to the next man through the door.

He stepped through jerkily, as if wanting to be somewhere else. As soon as he saw her a wash of red came across his visage, then he blinked and stared for a minute as recognition flashed into his eyes. The blood drained from his face, the dark contrast of the cloak making his face appear far whiter than it was.

Deidara. Wonderful.

 _I killed his master._

 _Bad,_ bad _idea to put myself at_ his _mercy._

The Akatsuki were after her friend. They had committed crimes against her village and the allied Sand village. Looked at dispassionately (and Sakura was struggling very hard by now to maintain her 'dispassionate' personae), those violent acts couldn't be taken personally. All sides involved had conflicting goals, and violence happened when conflicting goals collided. As far as Deidara was concerned, however—

 _He's the one member of the Akatsuki with a_ personal _grudge against me._

 _No._

Itachi said something very quietly under his breath that Sakura couldn't hear, but Deidara started. He half-bowed to the Leader, gave her a steady stare before jerking his head down in an approximation of the same nod the other two gave her, and after a glance around the room marched to the corner farthest away from Itachi. He leaned against the wall and studied her with wary hostility.

Sakura watched the door expectantly, but the mind-controlled ninja closed it after an apologetic glance her way. Apparently, this was it.

Great.

She had to pick between three men she had already mentally rejected.

It was like one of those daytime game shows Naruto sometimes watched between missions, where people were set up on dates in hope of finding their life partner. He would sit on the couch roaring with laughter and wonder how people could be _that_ desperate.

 _Bachelor Number One: Could you please explain in sixty seconds or less under which circumstances you would feel the slaughter of your entire clan would be appropriate?_

 _Desperate_ didn't began to describe the black emotions trying to claw their way up Sakura's throat. For one horrible moment she was sure she was going to be violently ill. But she swallowed hard and focused her will, and the taste of bile receded.

"What now?" Sakura asked when no one seemed willing to speak.

"Now you pick," said the Leader in his this-is-perfectly-reasonable voice. "These three all have abilities that complement your own qualities well—"

"'Qualities'?" Sakura couldn't believe her ears, and being dispassionate flew out the window. She slammed her palms down on the table, wishing she could access her chakra and split the damn thing in half. "'Qualities'?! What, I'm female? What more do you need than that?!"

There was a snicker from one of her suitors.

The one that looked like a shark.

Great. The only one of them with a sense of humor had gills, for the love of the Hokage.

"Your chakra control is exceptional, as I'm sure you know," replied the Leader as if she had posed a perfectly reasonable question and not just exploded in tension and helpless anger. "We have high hopes it will be passed on."

Sakura rubbed her forehead. "Exactly how am I supposed to choose? Twenty questions? Check their teeth? Short straw wins?"

"Loses," muttered Deidara.

Another snicker from Kisame.

Sakura had a headache long before she was forced into this room that she thought couldn't possibly get any worse. She was being proved wrong. She stared at her potential suitors and snapped, "Do any of you guys have an opinion about this?"

"Irrelevant," said the Leader sharply.

Kisame moved his big shoulders in a shrug and answered anyway. "You're kinda on the young side for me," he drawled. He grinned, showing all of his sharp teeth. "You're pretty so I'd find a way to adjust if I had to, I'm sure."

The shark had given her a compliment, indicated that he was in no hurry and presented her with an excuse for rejecting him, all in a few simple words. Sakura glanced at him in consideration before shaking her head sharply as if to clear the mental images. _What_ was this situation _doing_ to her common sense?

The Uchiha said nothing, but his mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. Sakura couldn't decide if that was revulsion or careful restraint. Obviously, however, he wasn't going to offer any response.

And Deidara …

Deidara was holding his hands slightly apart, thumbs touching the tips of opposite forefingers as if he were framing her for a picture.

His palms were facing her.

She could see the _mouth_ in the center of each of those palms. There were no tongues sticking out or teeth showing, for which Sakura was very grateful.

"I wouldn't mind sculpting her," Deidara remarked in an interested tone.

The other two looked at him as if he were crazy. So did Sakura, but she had been looking at all three of them that way since they had entered the room so no one noticed.

Deidara shrugged. "She'd blow up nice, okay?" His smile was nasty, and then the mouths of _both_ hands opened up as tongues wiggled at her.

Sakura flinched.

Kisame snorted in an amused manner but said, his tone warning, "Be nice, kid."

The one with the very sharp teeth and the oversized frame that did _not_ appear as if cuddling normal-sized women had been considered in its creation was the _only_ one making a positive impression on her.

Great.

 _Bachelor Number Two: Has any woman_ ever _survived having sex with you? If so, I want face-to-face meetings and statements from their physicians. I'll also require ANBU stationed nearby who specialize in lie-detecting jutsu._

"I can't do this," said Sakura to herself, appalled when she realized that she had spoken aloud. But all three males in front of her nodded in acknowledgement of her words before glancing towards the indistinct form of their Leader.

"Then I will chose for you," the Leader responded coolly. Sakura was momentarily relieved (as odd as that seemed) that the choice would not be hers before he continued with, "It will not be limited to individuals in this room. Zetsu, perhaps. He has a bloodline limit that would be very useful for our purposes."

Sakura flinched again. So did Deidara. Kisame gave the Leader's astral projection a reproving frown and Itachi … looked the same as he always did, really.

"Fine, then," growled out Sakura. "You!" She pointed, but not at any of the three men selected for her by the Leader. Instead her arm swept towards the ninja who had brought her into the room, the one with the Water Country headband.

The ninja on the receiving end of her stare jumped. "Um, me?"

"Yes!"

Kisame laughed, Deidara looked relieved enough to faint, and the Uchiha raised an eyebrow which no one could see because of the way he wore his bangs but it was an indication of the depth of his surprise.

"Ah…" The ninja looked around frantically but not even the Leader spoke as they waited to see what Sakura was going to do next.

Sakura reached to the top of her head to tug at her Leaf forehead protector. Every shinobi in the room tensed. The Uchiha studied her coolly with the sharingan, Kisame reached a big hand up to grasp the handle of his sword, and Deidara made a grab for his clay before realizing _this wasn't his robe, dammit_ and the clay was in the kitchen with his REAL robe.

But all she did was pull the protector down over her eyes and snap in the general direction of the ninja, "Spin me."

"Ah, what?"

"Spin me," Sakura insisted between clenched teeth. She pushed away from the table so hard the chair squeaked in mechanical protest. "This chair rotates, right? I'm just going to point while you spin me around, and whomever I'm pointing to when I stop spinning is _it_."

"Like 'spin the bottle'? That works," agreed Kisame.

There was a moment where everyone in the room, even the mind-controlled ninja, contemplated a time in Kisame's youth where he might have actually _played_ 'spin-the-bottle' with someone. It was followed by a collective shudder.

Sakura bit back a gasp when she felt the chair dip as the ninja placed a hand on the back of it. "Ready?"

 _Of course not, you idiot._ "Do it," said Sakura grimly.

She heard the hand shift to the chair's side, then felt the centrifugal pull as she was spun around hard. Keeping her eyes closed, she bit down on her lip and stuck her arm out as she sensed the chair's rotation slowing down. It slowly creaked to a stop. Trembling she moved her other hand to the protector over her eyes to see who she was pointing at, but a chuckle made her pause.

"Keep it on," advised Kisame. "You're not done yet."

"Why not?" Sakura demanded.

"Because I'm not eligible," came the Leader's voice, sounding amused.

"Why not?" muttered another voice she recognized as Deidara's.

Perhaps covering her eyes made her more receptive to nuances because Sakura was sure it was the only time she had ever heard any emotion at all in the Leader's voice. Sakura sighed. "Again," she told the ninja behind her.

The second time it was a door, which Sakura thought might have been subliminal on her part because she really wanted to walk through that door and out of this crazy place, and the third time it was a painting on the wall which Kisame assured her, through chortles, was a very _attractive_ picture and he would be _happy_ to make sure it was moved to her rooms. The fourth time, however, there was stark silence when the chair creaked to a halt. Sakura, who had been feeling faintly nauseous during the last two spins, felt more relief than anything else. She tugged the headband around her neck and squinted down her pointing finger to find-

"Aw, hell," said Deidara faintly.

Sakura could only nod in complete agreement.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Vessel, Part 3  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 3**

"This bites," announced Deidara.

Kisame snickered. He was a compulsive smirker at the best of times, but Deidara thought he had been deriving an _unnecessary_ amount of amusement from Deidara's predicament over the last few hours. After the meeting Sakura had been escorted back to her room; Deidara frankly envied the ease of her escape. _He_ had to stay and listen to the Leader's 'rules of engagement' for this so-called mission, and endure the further humiliation of being told that Kisame and the Uchiha were his freakin' _backup_ should it prove impossible for him to 'impregnate' the Haruno brat. Kisame had not gone a _minute_ during the briefing without chuckling, chortling, guffawing, or out-and-out _laughing_ raucously.

Stuff like that could get on a guy's _nerves_ , okay?

The three men were in the kitchen. Deidara and the Uchiha were sitting at the table while Kisame puttered around near the stove. He was dipping out the last bit of their dinner from the deep fryer.

One would never know it to look at him, but Kisame's light touch with the chopsticks meant he was quite adept at preparing batter that produced the fluffiest tempura in three countries. Unfortunately he sometimes over-fried the vegetables a bit _after_ they had been coated. Itachi claimed that, since Kisame didn't eat vegetables himself, he wasn't very good at discerning when they were done.

His shrimp tempura, however, was to _kill_ for.

"There, that's the last of it." Kisame put the final platter on the table. "Chow down."

The Uchiha politely thanked him for cooking. Deidara scowled and grabbed for the shrimp before the other two males ate it all.

Kisame set down two bottles of sake on the table and sat across from Deidara, grinning at his partner. "Ah, Itachi, our little Deidara is all grown up and about to become a man. It's time for us to give him 'the talk'. We wouldn't want him to get all flustered around sweet little Sakura, now, would we?"

Deidara snarled, "I don't need the freakin' _talk_ , okay?!" Laughing out loud, Kisame held up one hand palm-out as if asking for peace before pouring some of the rice wine into a cup and placing it in front of Deidara. The younger man promptly seized the cup and tried to empty its contents in one gulp.

"You've been with a woman before, right?" asked the Uchiha between bites of his meal, his tone perfectly serious, even _clinical_.

Deidara nearly spit out his sake. _"None of your goddamned business!"_ he sputtered when he could.

There was one of those fraught pauses that seethed until the unspoken seemed to have weight, if not actual sound.

Deidara refused to look at either of the other males in the room. It wasn't as if he hadn't _thought_ about it, dammit, but between his art and art-related assignments for the Akatsuki he was kept very, _very_ busy. And although he had no moral qualms about hiring a professional – well, he didn't want just _anyone_ looking at him naked, okay? There were things about his body that were just not meant to be seen unless someone knew ahead of time what she was getting into.

The teeth on his palms clenched against the porcelain of the cup he held between them.

Yeah. _Things._

A _thing_ was about what he felt like right now.

"This _bites,_ that's all," he finally muttered in the general direction of his sake cup. "I'm not a freakin' piece of meat, okay?"

"Neither is she," said Kisame with marked coolness. It made him sound jarringly like the Uchiha for a moment. Deidara gave him an incredulous stare. Kisame shrugged. "What? I liked her. So you better be nice to her."

You _do her, then_ , thought Deidara viciously, but he kept that thought to himself.

"None of us care to be treated like 'meat'," commented the Uchiha. "It is part of what holds us together as Akatsuki. Once the new order is established, no one, whether from a clan with a bloodline limit or peasant formally controlled by a feudal lord, will be treated without consideration for his own personal wishes. Until then;" his mouth pressed into a thin, hard line; "until then," the Uchiha repeated with distaste, "sacrifices have to be made."

"It's not like you have to jump her tonight," Kisame observed. The Uchiha's brows pulled together at the comment's crudity. Kisame blithely continued. "Probably best you don't put any moves on her right away. She's held it together pretty well, but she's got to be totally freaked by the situation. If she gets a chakra surge, you do _not_ want to have done something that makes flattening _you_ her number one priority."

Wonderful. A reminder that the woman he was _stuck_ with had monstrous strength that could turn him into the consistency of his own clay with one punch. He was far-above-average when it came to hand-to-hand skills, but his specialty was distance fighting. A single unexpected blow from her would put him down for the count.

Deidara pushed at the sake cup with the tips of his fingers. Taking the hint, Kisame filled it up again.

"Just talk to her," suggested the Uchiha. "She trained with my brother, and Sasuke does not suffer fools."

"He 'suffered' that Naruto clown, eh?" muttered Deidara.

The Uchiha continued as if the other man had not spoken. "She must have reasonable moments. Kisame's right; this afternoon was stressful, but she dealt with it far better than I believed she would. If you talk it out with her, it may not be as bad as you believe."

Sympathetic advice from the man who freakin' _drafted_ him into the Akatsuki in the first place.

Could this day get any worse?

Oh, wait… he was expected to spend the night with that pink-haired harridan.

…Yeah, it could get worse.

Groaning, Deidara shoved his plate aside to put his head down on the table. "Bites, bites, _bites_ ," he muttered viciously into the wood grain.

The other two members of the Akatsuki looked at each other. Kisame shrugged; the Uchiha exhaled with a little more force than required by normal breathing.

"Have some more sake," the former suggested.

* * *

Sakura sat at the dining table in the corner of the sitting, staring at an open book.

It was a very rare medical tome from the Mist Country involving methods to clear chakra channels after a psychic attack. Sakura hoped the technique might also be used to void the effects of the sharingan should it be turned against her.

Of course, the fact that she currently didn't possess the ability to access her chakra was a detriment to the success of any new techniques she might attempt to learn.

She also hadn't turned the page in over an hour. She would occasionally blink, catch sight of it again, tell herself that she should _really_ commit this to memory because it might be useful to her village should Itachi ever decide to visit his native land for another murder spree. Then she would resume staring blankly at the same page without really seeing it.

When the door opened she leapt to her feet, fists clenched. The adrenaline surge was there, but there was no accompanying burst of chakra. Gritting her teeth, Sakura reminded herself that she had promised a broken nose for her supposed "partner" and lack of chakra was not going to save him from at least that.

As she expected, the newcomer was Deidara.

However, he didn't appear very dangerous at the moment.

Deidara was precariously balancing a tray with one hand, while simultaneously trying not to drop something tucked under his opposite arm. There was an irritated stream of invective being muttered under his breath that, from what little she could catch, appeared to be a running commentary on how playing waiter _wasted_ his abilities.

Suddenly her fighting stance seemed a little silly.

Sakura straightened self-consciously, wondering if she should offer to help. Deidara kicked the door closed behind him and for the first time made eye contact. He appeared startled to see her, eyes widening as he stopped dead in his tracks. Even though she felt the comment was overkill, Sakura still uttered what she rehearsed saying over the last several hours. "Just so we're clear on this, touch me and you die."

A snort. "As _if_ ," Deidara growled. He fumbled a bit more with the tray, then managed to get it onto the small dining table with a minimum of spillage. Sakura backed away cautiously, then felt silly again because he didn't even notice. "I have to bring your meals from now on," Deidara groused, not sounding happy about it.

Making the captive dependent on a particular person for sustenance was a classic method of building trust, although it was done with the knowledge that the trust would need to be broken sooner or later. It was more likely to succeed when the captive wasn't a trained ninja who was well aware of the strategy. "Well, that's rather cliché."

" _Tell_ me about it," snapped Deidara. He flipped the rectangular object he had tucked under his arm around, holding it out to Sakura with an expression of disgust across his face. "Kisame made me bring this stupid thing, too. It's the picture you picked out," he prodded when Sakura just stared at it blankly.

No wonder Kisame had laughed so hard.

It was a nude.

A very tasteful nude reclining on her side, back to the viewer as she glanced coyly over one shoulder, but still; a nude.

Sakura decided that she didn't want to know what a medium-sized oil painting of a naked woman was doing in one of the Akatsuki's hideouts. Maybe it was payment for a mission or something. "Ah, it's, um, charming."

"It is not," said Deidara flatly. "It's not even _art_." He thrust it at her and released his hold so that Sakura had to grab the painting or risk it toppling to the ground. For a moment she held it by the frame, staring at the flesh tones and wondering what she was supposed to _do_ with this thing. Shaking her head, Sakura turned her back to Deidara and walked over to one of the many bookcases that lined the wall. She carefully propped it up against a shelf.

When she turned around, Deidara was seated at the table. He had taken _her_ chair, the one that had the wall at its back and a clear view of the door. The tray with the food was opposite from him. A leather pouch had been slung on the table. As she watched him cautiously, he reached into it and pulled out a handful of clay.

Sakura tensed.

Glancing at her, Deidara rolled his eyes. "Eat," he said. "I said I'd sculpt you, and I'm going to sculpt you."

"Will it blow up?" asked Sakura cautiously

"No." He sounded disappointed. Flipping his hand up, Deidara showed her the mouth in the palm. "I have to use _this_ to infuse the clay with chakra before anything explodes, okay? _This,"_ he smashed a handful onto the table before reaching into the bag for more, "is just normal clay."

"I didn't think you made anything unless you could blow it up."

"Normally I don't, okay? Itachi thought you might get upset if I gave you something that exploded, especially if it looked like you." He sounded disgusted by this compromise of his art.

Sakura's eyes widened. That was weirdly considerate of the elder Uchiha. Such thoughtfulness from a mass murderer was, in fact, far more creepy than witnessing a small clay sculpture based on her likeness detonate. She seated herself across the table from Deidara, keeping a wary eye on him as she carefully tasted each of the dishes set before her to determine if anything had been put into her meal. There were no heavy spices (a dead giveaway for drugs) and no unusual aftertastes.

Deidara didn't look up from his mound of clay, which he was pushing into a vaguely oval shape with his thumbs. "Nothing's drugged, okay?" He sounded mildly amused at the notion.

"Forgive me if I don't take your word for it."

"We're not to do anything that would be bad for the vessel, so drugs are out, okay? Anyway, if I wanted you unconscious, I'd ask Itachi to put you under with the sharingan," he pointed out.

Sakura considered the sharingan and the various mind-games Itachi could inflict upon her using it the single biggest danger to her welfare, more so than any poisoned food. "Would he _do_ that?"

Deidara grinned nastily. "To get a woman, you mean? For himself, I don't think so, eh? For me or someone else, yeah, probably. We wouldn't even have to ask _nicely_. He wouldn't care."

Great. She would have been _protected_ from the sharingan if she had picked the Uchiha. Sakura glumly considered that her sarcastic suggestion of twenty questions during that bizarre meeting might have been a good idea after all. She should have asked all of them how far they were willing to go to insist on her compliance.

"It's going to come to that, eh?" Deidara asked her quietly. He didn't look at her as he said it, instead concentrating on the clay under his hands.

There was no way Sakura could possibly agree to participate in this insane plan. "Probably," she agreed wearily.

He glanced over at her, frowning, before turning his attention back to what he was doing. "Try not to think about it too much, okay? There's a good six months before the Leader will even ask how things are going. Things could change."

"What, he doesn't want his baby-making machine immediately operating at full capacity?"

"No." The single word was curt. Deidara didn't offer any reasons for the delay. "He told you that, right?"

"You expect me to believe him?"

"He doesn't lie, eh," said Deidara. "Lots of things he does do, yeah, but not lying." The clay he molded was beginning to take shape as the oval smoothed into something more cylindrical.

Rather than a bust he was constructing a small statuette, a little over six inches high. The features were largely unformed but the body's proportions were becoming recognizable. "You work fast."

"I use this stuff in combat," Deidara pointed out, glancing at her again. "I _have_ to work fast." He looked back at what he was doing. Sakura realized that those quick assessing glances were to help him fashion the clay into the form he wanted. "Eat," he told her.

"You're not eating." Sakura considered that suspicious.

"I ate already. Kisame made tempura. He put some aside for you, but we talked too long after dinner and it got soggy, okay?"

Sakura decided the involuntary mental image that popped into her head of Kisame in a frilly apron happily mixing batter for tempura ranked up there with the idea of Kisame playing spin-the-bottle as _something I never want to think about again. Ever._

"Also not art," grumbled Deidara petulantly at the statuette. "But at least it's done, eh? Here." Standing up, he leaned towards her side of the table, placing the finished piece by Sakura's cup. He was a little close for Sakura's peace of mind. She started to pull back in her chair, but Deidara abruptly lost his balance and had to slam one palm to the table to stay upright. Pushing off from the table, he fell heavily back into the chair.

Sakura stared at him with blank realization. "You're drunk."

His mouth twisted bitterly as he tilted his head forward. The spill of hair across his face obscured much of his expression. "Naw, just lit a little."

A drunk (or even 'lit') Akatsuki represented a dangerous unknown. What if alcohol affected him the way it affected Rock Lee? After regarding Deidara warily, Sakura decided on mild sarcasm. "Staying out drinking with the boys already?"

"Guess the honeymoon's over, eh?" The response had the same bitter quality Sakura had seen across his face before he deliberately used his hair as a shield.

"Deidara, _why_ were you drinking?"

He raised his head, staring at her with stark enmity sketched into the planes of his face. "Why do you _think_?" he snarled, his tone so vicious that Sakura flinched against her chair again. He made no move towards her, however, just flicked her another scornful glance before dropping his chin to his chest, again hiding his face behind the sweep of his long blond hair.

Hardly even believing what she was reading from his expression and body language, Sakura asked carefully, "Um, are you saying you don't _want_ to—"

"Hell, no, I don't want to!" Deidara folded his arms on top of the table and thumped his forehead against the back of his hands. "Man, this _bites_ , okay?"

Well. This was unexpected.

Sakura knew _she_ had objections, but it had never occurred to her that any of the men involved might have objections as well, or feel as forced and angry and helpless as she did.

She and Deidara had something in common; they both considered themselves potential victims of sexual coercion, and they both intensively disliked the mere thought of it.

How odd.

Sakura rubbed her fingertips against her forehead. Just when she thought the situation she was trapped in couldn't possibly get any more bizarre, she was proved wrong.

"You getting tired?" It came out as an accusation.

Dropping her hand, Sakura saw that Deidara had his head up, glaring at her. She wasn't really all that tired, her thoughts were spinning around too much to even consider sleep, but she promptly lied in the hopes that it would make him leave. "Yes, a little."

He made no move for the door. In fact, he looked even more irritated.

"What's the matter?"

"I have to stay in here," grumbled Deidara. He didn't sound like he was looking forward to it.

"Why?"

Deidara looked at her like it was, hands down, the most _stupid_ question he had ever heard. Sakura supposed it was. He answered it anyway, sarcastically. "Propinquity, duh."

Pushing her plate aside, Sakura propped her elbows on the table, put her hands together and rested her chin on her palms as she considered her reluctant dinner guest. "You know, if your mission is to try and seduce me, you're doing a terrible job."

Deidara snorted. "Hey, this wasn't my idea, okay? If you wanted a smooth talker, you should have picked Kisame."

 _Point._

"I skipped seduction class at the ninja academy, okay?"

"I didn't," said Sakura unexpectedly.

Deidara gaped at her, eyes rounding. Sakura burst out laughing. "You should _see_ your face! It was called 'the arts of love'. Flower arranging, cooking, how to get a man's attention and hold it, stuff like that."

"What for?"

"You never know when you have to pretend to be someone's wife for a mission. That's hard to pull off if you don't have any domestic skills."

"You been on missions like that?"

"No. I'm not very domestic, and I'm not good at pretending."

He grinned slyly. "Didn't do well in the 'holding a man's attention' part either, eh?"

There was a brief silence.

"You must be the worst possible agent the Akatsuki could have chosen for this," decided Sakura.

"The Leader wants my bloodline limit, okay? It's not like I was picked for my charm."

"Obviously," muttered Sakura.

Deidara glared at her. "Hey, it was _your_ stupid chair that had to stop turning right when _I_ was in the line of fire."

Sakura sat back in her chair. "Watch me for a second." She brought one hand up near her ear and began to slowly twist strands of hair around her finger. Deidara blinked at her in surprise. "This is how you hold a man's attention," Sakura told him. Her gaze shifted, centered low on his face. "First, you pay very close attention to what they're saying. You watch their mouth a lot. You touch your own hair." Releasing the strand of hair, Sakura languidly ran her fingers along her the side of her own head as if tucking wayward strands into place. Deidara swallowed compulsively. "Tilt your head. Make sure, when you talk, your mouth is open enough that your tongue shows —"

" _Cut that out!_ " shrieked Deidara.

Sakura burst out laughing again.

"Well, it's freaky when you're explaining it and _doing_ it at the same time, okay?" Deidara appeared shaken. He was staring at Sakura in alarm, as if she might pounce on him any second.

He was making it very hard to be afraid around him, at least under the current circumstances. "So, if you have to stay here, where are you sleeping?"

Deidara continued to eye her suspiciously. "Not on the floor, okay? I traveled for a week straight to get here and I'm beat. Doesn't have to be the bed, but _not_ on the floor."

An hour ago Sakura could not have imagined that she would regard one of the Akatsuki staying in her quarters as anything other than a threat to her physical safety. Now she shrugged and said, "There's not a lot of choice in here. It's not like I have a sofa to park you on for the night. Let's look at the bed before we decide where to put you."

He shot her another suspicious glare and did not immediately follow when Sakura stood up from the table and moved towards the open doorway that led to her sleeping quarters.

Really, he was making it _impossible_ to be afraid around him.

Pausing in the doorway, Sakura surveyed the bedroom. It was simple, a dresser (with mostly empty drawers; she would have to see about getting more clothes than just her combat shorts and the robe that had been lying across the bed when she first woke up here), a nightstand, more bookcases on the far wall, and the bed itself. It was big, king-sized at least, and far longer than most beds. Sakura suddenly wondered if it had been constructed for the purpose of accommodating Kisame just in case _he_ ended up being the one forced to sleep here.

… _Ew._ So _not going there._

Sakura glanced over her shoulder. Deidara hadn't moved, nor had the suspicion faded from his visage.

"I can't believe I'm even suggesting this," Sakura told him, "but this thing is so huge we won't even notice each other in it. You stay on top of the covers and away from me, and I think we'll do fine for one night."

His eyes narrowing, Deidara didn't budge. Really, the Akatsuki assassin was acting as if _he_ was the one anticipating a forced pregnancy.

"You could just sleep there, I guess, if you're so frightened of me."

Deidara gave an irritated grunt that sounded like "tch" before standing up. He was perfectly steady as he walked towards her, although he was placed his feet with so much care he might have been a genin that newly learned the water-walking technique without being convinced it really worked. As he approached Sakura felt a fission of fear – _what am I_ doing?! - and tried to step back, but only crowded herself against the doorframe. He brushed by her without a glance. Not even his billowing robes touched her.

"Eh," he said after a minute of surveying the room as if looking for traps, "it'll do, huh." He shrugged off the dark Akatsuki robe and flung it on the far side of the bed. Underneath he wore a tank top with a mesh overshirt and simple dark pants. Sitting on the bed's edge, he slipped off his sandals. For a moment he rested his head in his hands, and Sakura thought that the young man really _did_ look exhausted. Scooting over, he pulled the robe over his body and turned his back.

Sakura rocked back and forth on her feet indecisively. She was about to get into bed with a man whose mission it was to _impregnate_ her. Not that he appeared very interested in actually carrying _out_ said mission, much to her relief; still, she had to be crazy to put herself in such a potentially vulnerable position.

On the other hand, it _was_ a really big bed.

Although Sakura didn't feel especially sleepy, she knew the various shocks and travails of the day would likely hit her all at once and she might as well be lying down already prepared to pass out when that happened.

Sakura walked to the edge of the bed, sat down, and took off her sandals. Pulling down the sheets, she rolled into bed without removing any of her clothes and tugged the covers up to her neck. She lay with her back to Deidara, staring wide-eyed into the semi-darkness. Neither of them had bothered to turn out any of the lights in the adjoining room; it was as if they silently acknowledged that they didn't want to be in the _dark_ with other.

After a few minutes a sleepy mumble came from Deidara's side of the bed. "This wasn't terrible tonight, huh?" He sounded very surprised.

Relaxing a bit, Sakura chuckled. "It was a little rough in spots, but not nearly as horrible as I expected it to be," she acknowledged. "If I wake up with you spooning me or something, you die."

Deidara snorted. "As _if._ "


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Vessel, Part 4**

Title: Vessel, Part 4  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 4**

* * *

Sakura awoke to the sound of water running. Blearily she raised her head, half-instinctively checking for chakra signatures before she remembered she _couldn't._ That woke her up fast.

Sitting up in the bed, she glanced around. Deidara wasn't there, but his Akatsuki cloak lay across the foot of the bed so Sakura assumed he hadn't left. Looking towards the bathroom, she saw the door was slightly ajar.

Right. He was going to come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, she would swoon over his manly six-pack, and as quick as anyone could say "jinchuuriki vessel" she'd be pregnant.

Sakura rolled her eyes. _And I thought the whole_ meals _thing was clichéd!_

Pulling her knees to her chest, Sakura loosely wrapped her arms around her legs as she watched that strip of light. Whoever orchestrated this little maneuver must have forgotten that she was a medic who saw naked men in clinical situations all the time.

 _Admittedly, this situation isn't quite clinical since_ I'm _the one in bed …_

The water shut off.

There was the rustle of cloth, water running briefly in the sink, then more cloth rustling. Sakura dropped her chin to her knees and mentally ran through a selection of sardonic comments in preparation for Deidara's appearance. _Well, you're no Itachi,_ was the one she thought might do the most damage. He had tossed a couple of glares at the Uchiha during the previous day's meeting; Sakura thought it possible that the two didn't get along.

The door swung open. Sakura lifted her head, opened her mouth, and immediately shut it again.

He had a towel, all right, but it was currently being used to briskly dry his hair. Not that it mattered what body part the towel was covering since Deidara was already completely dressed in the dark pants, pale tank top and mesh shirt he'd had under his Akatsuki robe last night. Only his feet were bare. She couldn't see if he had a six-pack, but since he was more sinew than muscle probably not. The descriptions of Deidara's fighting style from Naruto and Kakashi indicated that Deidara's clay-based technique had more in common with throwing specialists than other ninja arts, and throwing specialists tended to have more defined arm, upper back and lateral muscles than abdominal muscles.

Sakura decided to store her sarcastic comment away for another day when it might be more useful. "Good morning," she finally offered when he seemed determined to remained buried under the towel.

He flinched and glared at her through strands of damp hair before muttering what might have been a return greeting in her general direction. Perching on the foot of the bed (as far away from her as he possibly get and still be _on_ the bed, Sakura noted in amusement), he slipped on his sandals. Then, as he had done the night before, he braced his elbows on his knees and leaned his head into his hands, damp hair and the ends of the towel spilling over his face and shoulders.

"Hangover?"

"It's a _headache_ ," Deidara said defensively, albeit very quietly.

Grinning, Sakura clasped her hands in front of her. She had automatically done the first two seals of a healing jutsu before the lack of chakra registered. Having it was so much a part of her that she had to readjust to its lack every morning. She stared at her hands as if they had betrayed her.

"Nice try," Deidara said sardonically. His posture hadn't changed, but his head turned slightly towards her, his eyes cold as he watched. Obviously he thought she attempted an attack jutsu while his guard was down.

"I have to help my master with her hangovers all the time," said Sakura glumly. _Of all the things to suddenly miss; Tsunade_ ' _s foul mood the day after a bender. Captivity is doing strange things to my perspectives in life._ She grimaced at her entwined hands and dropped them to the covers.

Deidara scowled at her, not completely convinced. He pulled the towel from his head, slinging it around his neck instead. "You don't have a blow dryer."

"Of course not. I might hang myself with the cord."

His accusatory expression turned quizzical.

"No, I'm not suicidal, but if you plan on holding someone long term and you _don't_ want them to kill themselves, you have to make sure not to leave anything that they can kill themselves with."

"Makes sense," he agreed, although he sounded annoyed about it. He _did_ have a lot of hair; Sakura remembered how hard taking care of it had been when her hair was long.

He stood up with a sigh, rubbing a hand across his jaw and wincing slightly. Likely he needed to shave, but of course they hadn't included any razors with Sakura's bath supplies. Even one with a safety edge could be used to open arteries if someone was determined to die. "I'll have to bring some my stuff in here, okay?"

How was she going to stop him without chakra? Sakura shrugged. "Knock yourself out."

Twisting, he threw the damp towel back into the bathroom. Sakura frowned as she realized she might be picking up after her enforced roommate more than she liked. Snagging the robe from the foot of the bed, Deidara pulled it on as he headed for the bedroom's open doorway.

Sakura touched the necklace at her throat absently, a gesture that was becoming a habit. When she registered the cool metal under her fingertips, a calculating expression came into her eyes. "Wait, do you think you could help me get this off?"

He started and whirled around, eyes huge in his face.

Sakura sighed. Hard to believe given the specified reason she was here, but _he_ was far jumpier about the whole enforced-close-quarters thing than _she_ was. " _This_ ," she specified, running a finger across the thin silver collar at her throat. "I can't find the clasp."

Deidara rocked back and forth on his feet indecisively for a second, studying her suspiciously.

Sakura sighed again, and added an eye roll for good measure. "Look, I don't _want_ to get pregnant, remember? I'm not going to molest you, and attacking you without chakra is pointless. This thing's a little too tight to be comfortable and I can't figure out the fastener, that's all."

After a moment Deidara jerked his head forward in a nod and came back to the bed. Dropping her chin down, Sakura ran her fingers under the hair at the back of her head and pulled it up, out of the way.

Sakura realized she was in bed with a man leaning over her, the nape of her neck bared to him. It couldn't help but be an intimate situation. If Deidara's skittishness was a deliberate ploy to make her more relaxed in his presence, it was working. She would have to be careful about letting her guard drop _too_ much.

It was unavoidable that his calloused fingers touched her skin. Deidara made a questioning humming sound after a moment, and began to run his fingers over the necklace's surface. Curling two fingers under the slender metal, he felt along it, looking for a release mechanism on the flat section next to her skin. "There isn't a clasp." His tone was annoyed, as if he suspected her of a trick.

Sakura sighed in defeat, releasing her hair. It spilled over her neck and across Deidara's hand as he continued to search for the elusive fastening. "It's what they're using to suppress my chakra, isn't it?"

Deidara's hand stilled. "This isn't yours, eh?"

"No, it was on me when I woke up. I've been trying to get it off, but without chakra, I can't do a thing about it."

"Can you feel _anything_?"

He meant chakra-wise. "No. I'm completely unable to sense it. It's … it's like being underwater, or maybe like losing your hearing. An entire series of sensations has been cut off from me."

His hands fell away. When she turned to gaze up at him, Sakura saw Deidara was frowning, although he was looking off to the side so the frown wasn't directed at her. It was as if he was mentally rolling a puzzle piece around in his mind, trying to see where it fit in the jigsaw. His eyes met hers, and he abruptly said, "If there's no clasp, they must mean for you to keep it on, eh?"

"Yes," Sakura acknowledged bitterly.

Deidara slid off the bed, still with that considering expression across his face. "I'll go get your breakfast."

Deidara stopped by the bedroom he had thrown his traveling gear in to pick up some supplies. At first he just grabbed the duffle bag and slung it over his shoulder before sighing, putting it back down and rummaging through it. Evidently the Leader didn't want sharp objects around Sakura. Deidara felt silly putting a seal on his shaving kit so only he could access it but, really, why take chances? He also dumped out all the extra kunai and shuriken stored within, and rolled his eyes when he found a stack of exploding tags. Tobi sometimes mixed up which bag belonged to whom and would put _his_ stuff in with Deidara's. Exploding tags were lower art as far as Deidara was concerned. He set them aside with a sniff of distaste.

He backtracked to Sakura's room and put the bag next to the door.

Next stop, the kitchen.

Which was occupied.

 _Terrific._

The Uchiha glanced over his shoulder and then looked back down at what he was preparing on the stove, his version of a morning greeting. Kisame sat at the table, devouring what appeared to be an entire carton of scrambled eggs. Deidara sighed. Leaning his shoulder against the frame of the doorway, he waited for his turn at the stove.

"And how is Sakura this morning?" asked Kisame.

Deidara shrugged. He wasn't sure how she was, in all truth. If his chakra was blocked he'd be hysterical with anger, throwing anything he could get his hands on. Sakura's grim acceptance puzzled him.

If it _was_ acceptance, which it probably wasn't. Given her little trick with the necklace this morning, Sakura was obviously trying to figure out how to unblock her chakra channels. He wasn't sure himself what was keeping her chakra from regenerating, but he would have to be careful. She was clever.

"Did you and sweet little Sakura have a nice," Kisame grinned widely, showing all his sharp teeth, "'talk' last night?"

"Yes, we did, as a matter of fact, okay?"

The Uchiha paused in his stirring. Turning, he reached for a nearby cup as another batch of scrambled eggs bubbled gently on the burner.

"Anything in particular, or were you two just discussing the weather?"

Deidara smirked, and kept his voice as even and prosaic as possible. "The arts of love, okay?"

There was a faint coughing noise from the Uchiha, although since he was sipping his green tea at the time the liquid may have just gone down the wrong pipe.

Kisame burst out laughing. "Heh. Maybe he should be giving _us_ 'the talk', eh, Itachi?"

The Uchiha set down his cup and turned back to the stove. Another stir with a wooden spoon, then he scrapped the eggs out onto a plate, which he held out to Deidara. The younger man lifted a brow in surprise, but came forward to take it.

"There's miso soup ready," said the Uchiha, inclining his head to a covered pot set on low heat on the back burner. "I'll make some more eggs."

"Um, thanks," muttered Deidara, eyeing Itachi's back and wondering if he might be coming down with something. The Uchiha wasn't usually the domesticated one when they were forced to stay at a base together. Deidara mentally debated if the other man was trying to make the awkward situation with Sakura easier to deal with before promptly rejecting the idea. It just wasn't in Itachi's nature to smooth things over.

He'd have to be cautious around the Uchiha as well, not that Deidara was ever at ease around Itachi. Who could tell what sort of mind games the sharingan user might have planned?

Setting the plate on the table, Deidara grabbed two trays and began to put together the rest of the meal. "Don't you guys have better things to do than hang out in here, eh?"

"Not really," answered Kisame without his usual smirk. Uchiha passed over a second plate, which Kisame accepted to place on one of Deidara's trays. "Until your mission succeeds, or until it fails and one of us has to take over, we're pretty much stuck here." Then he _did_ smirk, and Deidara found himself thinking it was a good thing _she_ couldn't see Kisame right this instance or she'd be scared out of her wits. "So keep us updated if you ever get past first base, all right? If it looks like it's working out for you two, the Leader may let _us_ out of here."

Deidara wasn't clear on what the various 'bases' represented but since he hadn't touched her at all he was reasonably sure he hadn't reached any.

He frowned thoughtfully as he poured out a second cup of green tea. He _had_ stroked her neck with the back of his knuckles this morning…

Giving his head a little shake, Deidara snapped "That's none of your business" at Kisame, and picked up Sakura's breakfast tray.

He was practically out the door when the Uchiha spoke. "We're going to train in an hour." It could have been a casual comment, an invitation to join them or an order to be disobeyed only by someone with a death wish. Although it was hard to tell, with the Uchiha it was always best to assume the latter.

Deidara sighed. He _hated_ training with the Uchiha if only because it reminded Deidara of how he was coerced into the Akatsuki in the first place, but Tobi had traveled on to the Leader's location for one of his ever-so-mysterious solo missions, and he _did_ need to work out. "Fine, yeah, I'll be there."

As soon as Deidara left, Sakura became restless.

She was a social person by nature. She had a wide range of friends. Her medical career required near constant contact with people. For the past week, however, Sakura had been held in isolation. She hadn't _minded_ , precisely, there were other things to worry about, as well as plenty of interesting texts to read when worrying became too overwhelming and she needed a distraction, but dinner in Deidara's presence was the first extended social contact she had with another human being in a long time and she found herself craving company.

Sakura _knew_ what the Leader was doing; establishing psychological dependence using _propinquity,_ as Deidara scornfully called it. Right now, Sakura was as appalled at herself for feeling lonely as at the sheer effectiveness of the tactic itself.

Something to remember about clichés, Sakura decided as she rinsed out her clothes in the bathroom sink and wrung them dry as best she could; they became clichés because they _worked._ Again she reminded herself to remain on her guard. She showered quickly, grimacing as she pulled on her clammy clothes afterwards. She should have mentioned the whole wardrobe conundrum when the Leader asked ever-so-solicitously if she needed anything but, really, there were other things to deal with at the time.

Going out to the sitting area, Sakura put her hands on her hips and scowled at the room. As well as the dining table in the corner there was another low, wide table in the middle of the room with a couple of chairs parked next to it, and still more, smaller tables scattered about. It was a lot of tables, but the purpose behind them was to hold the overflow of books and scrolls from the bookcases. The large, low table even had a massive scroll case on top of it, ten drawers high, crammed full of medical techniques bearing the mark of the Waterfall Village. It was as if someone had just picked the entire case and walked off with it rather than search for the single mission scroll. Unfortunately without her strength-enhanced chakra most of the tables were too heavy for her to shove aside. The dining table was against the wall because she pushed it there the second day of her captivity, but Sakura couldn't get anything else to budge.

It was not that she had an overwhelming urge to redecorate. Sakura needed to exercise and even a chakra-less ninja required room to do so effectively. Anything involving kicks or flips or even spins could send her careening into the nearest heavy piece of furniture. If she were seriously injured in the resulting fall, Sakura wouldn't be able to heal herself.

Since she had promised someone a broken nose eventually Sakura needed to keep up her conditioning. After stretching she went through a series of push-ups and sit-ups, finishing with some simple kata, all she could do in the limited space provided. She was on one of the final forms when the door opened.

"What are you doing?" Deidara sounded mildly interested.

"What I can," she muttered as she turned to face him. "There's no room to work out properly."

He was balancing two trays this morning; evidently Deidara was joining her for breakfast. "Move some tables," he suggested as he wove his way around a couple of the smaller ones to put the trays down.

"Brilliant idea, why didn't I think of that?" Sakura said sarcastically.

Deidara gave her a quizzical glance.

"I _can't_ move the tables. With the scroll cases on top they're too heavy for me to even budge."

"Ah," he said, as if that explained a lot. "Itachi made breakfast, okay? Come eat."

"Itachi cooks?"

"Not really, but anyone can scramble eggs, eh? They'll get cold fast," Deidara warned.

He took _her_ seat again, the one with the view of the door. It was probably as ingrained a habit for him as it was for her; when one was in the business of covert operations, keeping an eye on all exits and entrances became second nature. Still, _Sakura_ was the captive, she was the one who really _needed_ to keep track of what was happening around her.

On the other hand, she was somewhat glad for the company. And the food smelled good. She had left most of last night's dinner untouched but now she was more at ease with Deidara and therefore more inclined to notice prosaic things like hunger. Sakura opted against making a big deal out of the seating arrangements, at least for now, and took the other chair.

She thanked him when Deidara set a cup of tea next to her plate and reached for it, but froze when she saw what else was there.

It was the small clay statue he had made for her.

It was right where Deidara placed it the night before; Sakura had forgotten about it after the shocked realization that Deidara was drunk. But it caught her eye as she reached for her drink, and suddenly it was all she could see.

The figure was done in simple lines, the sweep of her hair just hinted at, a stern expression suggested. What was startling was the position. The miniature Sakura was in an aggressive stance, gloved fists clenched and raised over her chest, knees bent ready to spring into battle.

Naruto would have laughed and called it a 'Sakura action figure,' but Sakura's response upon seeing it was far different.

 _I've never fought against Deidara directly, never faced him in battle. The only time he could have seen me in a fighting pose like that was right before —_

(—an esoteric argument on whether art was eternal or a brief blossom meant to fade, calmly held despite the enemies facing them, a great clay bird lifting off the ground as the blond nimbly leapt to its back, a farewell shouted towards one he referred to as "lord", casual language demonstrating he had no doubt that the man he left behind would prove victorious—)

— _right before I killed his master._

"Don't like green tea?" Deidara sounded aggrieved, as if he suspected she would nag him until he produced something more to her liking.

"It's fine," Sakura answered automatically as she picked up the cup, but she wasn't really paying attention. She couldn't take her eyes off the clay figure of herself.

Should she say something to him? Without knowing the context the little clay figure could even be considered a flattering portrayal of her fighting strength—

—but _she_ knew the context.

"It's not going to last," Deidara said.

Sakura started. "What?"

He gestured to the clay statuette she'd been staring at. "There's no kiln here, not," Deidara sniffed, "that I'd ever stoop to _using_ a kiln, okay? Without being fired, it'll gradually start flaking or chipping and eventually decay. Decay," he added with perfect seriousness, "is beauty of a sort. Gradual, inevitable destruction has a mesmerizing quality. But _this,"_ suddenly something flew up from his hand, and before Sakura could identify whether the little clay figure was a bird or a butterfly it hit the roof of her quarters and disintegrated with a small flash of light, " _this_ has the more immediate impact, eh? Better to blow it up quick and have the experience in the _now."_ Deidara glared at the Sakura "action figure" and grumbled, "Itachi knows nothing about real art."

Sakura had the presence of mind to cover her cup with one hand as a fine clay mist settled over the far end of the table. She made a face. _At least it missed the food. Anyone who_ does _marry this guy will have to do a lot of dusting._

She glanced at Deidara as she began to eat breakfast. Perhaps bringing up Sasori's argument about beauty being eternal was a way to introduce the subject of his master? Too abrupt, Sakura decided. "If you want to talk about art," she said carefully, "maybe they could include some books on art in here? I could study them, and that would give us something to talk about."

He frowned at her, touching the medical book open on the corner of the table with one finger before snatching his hand away as if burned. "You want _more_ books?" Evidently Deidara wasn't much for reading, given his reaction.

"It's something to do," shrugged Sakura. "I _could_ just be in here staring at bare walls. Your Leader didn't provide me with a single change of clothing, but I can't fault his reading material. I've never seen so many medical books and scrolls in a private collection. Some of these are rare, containing secret medical jutsu from other villages. I'll be able to do a lot of good for the Leaf when I go back."

Deidara shot her a strange look, similar to the one he cast her way that morning after discovering her necklace had no clasp. "Books aren't art, and you can't learn art from them, okay?" he said sharply. "Art is the here and the now, the immediacy of the experience."

Sakura drew a line through the fine dust on the table with one finger. "So I see. Well, what do you consider art, then? Live theatre?" She glanced at him again, took another bite of her breakfast, and suggested casually, "Kankuro's puppets?"

"The puppets, no. What he does with them, from what little I saw; yeah, I'd call him an artist. Got a long way to go, though, eh?"

"You've fought against him? Wait, was this when the Kazekage was kidnapped? I thought that was— " and she stopped because, although she had been baiting Deidara a little with the mention of puppets, Sakura still didn't feel it was her place to bring up what had happened to his master.

Deidara evidently did not notice her hesitation, for he shook his head and answered, "Master Sasori did, okay? That Kankuro looked like he had some style, but it was his bad luck to go up the guy that created his puppets."

There.

 _He_ said the name.

She had to take the opening.

Sakura's gaze dropped to her cup. Picking it up, she turned it between her hands. "Do you — want to know anything about Sasori?"

"He's dead and you helped kill him," said Deidara flatly. "What more is there to know, eh?"

 _Hard to argue with that._

"He wanted to make me into a puppet," she said quietly, still speaking to the cup rather than Deidara. "I couldn't let that happen to me."

Sakura glanced at Deidara just as his brows pulled together. His expression was closed and hard, directed inward as if reliving the moment when he discovered his master had fallen in combat. Apparently the subject was so painful that he didn't want to know anything about his master's final hour. They finished their meal in uncomfortable silence. When he collected the dishes she thanked him in a quiet voice, receiving a curt nod in return. Then he left, and Sakura was—

 _Alone again._

Sighing, Sakura pulled the medical book towards her. This time, however, with a full stomach and the realization that she wouldn't be alone too long since Deidara would return for the next meal (although what mood he would be in was a question mark), she was able to focus on memorizing the technique.

* * *

Deidara was confused.

He wasn't often confused. He was self-assured and confident, especially when it came to his art.

But _she_ had said something that evoked an unexpected response in his artist's soul, and now — Deidara was _really_ confused.

Like himself, Sasori of the Red Sand, his late master, was an artist. Oh, they disagreed on the true nature of art, sometimes violently (his master had a nasty temper when it came to his artistic ideals and didn't hesitate to back up his opinions with a thump or two from his puppet's poisoned, segmented tail), but for Master Sasori to offer to place a foe into his permanent puppet collection was a compliment. It meant they possessed the sort of eternal beauty that Sasori craved and strove to preserve.

Deidara wasn't surprised that Master Sasori wanted Sakura for his puppet collection. Everything Deidara heard about the struggle between his Master, Sakura and Chiyo indicated it was an epic masterpiece, an artistic explosion of puppets and puppetry techniques. Even Sakura herself became part of the art experience when she volunteered to be a human puppet for Chiyo to manipulate.

Master Sasori must have loved it.

Deidara could only hope that, when it came time for _him_ to go (smirking, he briefly touched the center of his chest as he walked towards the sense of Kisame's chakra in the forest) that he could make as bold an artistic statement with _his_ death.

No, the mention of his master by the only surviving member of the battle that killed him did not trouble Deidara. What disturbed Deidara was his own response to the information that Master Sasori wanted Sakura as a battle puppet.

His immediate thought was _What a waste, eh?_

And art was never a waste.

Right?

He arrived at a newly-hewed clearing. There were a few fresh stumps, but most of the trees had been reduced to dust. Ninja training was hard on the surrounding environment.

Kisame was waiting for him, smiling his toothy smile. "So how's the little woman?" he asked slyly.

"Going stir crazy."

"Not surprising. She's been here a whole week. Itachi's stir crazy, and he just got here three days ago."

Even for a S-class criminal as jaded and battle-hardened as Deidara, the thought of a stir crazy Itachi was disturbing. He chanced a glance toward the Uchiha's practice area. The other man was going through a throwing star drill, working on the quick wrist flick that brought the stars from their holster under his arm to thread between his fingers before throwing them at darting shadow clones of himself that went up in little puffs of smoke. Seeing so many Itachis in one place was disconcerting, but Deidara couldn't really discern anything that would indicate a bout of "stir crazy" in Kisame's partner.

"Since he's feeling so anti-social today, I get to be your opponent." The huge sword against Kisame's shoulder tapped a couple of times. "Lucky you, eh?"

Deidara didn't know what he was going to say until it was out of his mouth. "Maybe she can train with us sometimes, eh?"

Kisame glanced towards his partner as Itachi's last two shadow clones puffed out of existence. The Uchiha stood a short distance away, a few throwing stars still between the fingers of his left hand. A flick, and the weapons vanished back into the hidden holster. "Is there an increase in her chakra?" inquired the Uchiha.

Deidara snorted. "Not going to happen while she's in there, okay?"

"There is very little point in her training without chakra," stated the Uchiha.

"She can still do katas and taijutsu and defensive stuff as long as we aren't using special techniques. She's used to being active, okay? She got _really_ quiet before I left to come here. Being cooped up is making her pretty cranky."

Kisame snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure it's got _nothing_ to do with the situation itself. Still, she was out of her room for, what, an hour while we prettied up Deidara and had that meeting?" Deidara snarled at him, but Kisame continued on, "Looks like she can safely leave for short periods of time."

The Uchiha tilted his head towards his partner.

The big male shrugged. "I don't _mind_ is all I'm saying, but if her chakra gets unblocked there'll be hell to pay."

Nodding slightly, the Uchiha said. "I will confer with the Leader."

"Um, if you're going to do that," said Deidara, aware that his face was heating up but unable to stop it, "there's a couple of other things she needs as well."

The Uchiha switched his gaze to Deidara. His expression might best be described as 'mild inquiry.'

" _Do_ tell," murmured Kisame, and chuckled at the killing glare Deidara directed at him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Vessel, Part 5**

* * *

Title: Vessel, Part 5  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

Lunch was simple, some sandwiches and a green salad ("It wasn't my idea. Itachi says girls like rabbit food, okay?") with a pitcher of iced ginseng tea (evidently Deidara was now convinced that Sakura didn't like green tea), but not a lot of conversation. Deidara was _brooding_ , for lack of a better word, and it made him monosyllabic. He was also moving one shoulder a little gingerly, which Sakura assumed was a training accident. Her hands automatically flexed in preparation for healing, but this time she caught herself before it was too obvious that she was attempting a jutsu. After the meal he cleaned away the dishes without comment, and Sakura resigned herself to another afternoon of solitude.

However Deidara returned in an hour, a couple of the support ninjas in tow. "Tell them where you want stuff," he said to her. The rest of the afternoon was spent rearranging and organizing scrolls so that the emptied containers that once housed them could be removed, eliminating the need for the tables themselves. The one large table remained but was pushed along the wall behind the door; all other tables (except the dining table) and the two occasional chairs were removed. Sakura also had the ninjas take out the two area rugs; she didn't need to trip over those while practicing her various kata. Once the excess furniture was removed, the room proved to be very spacious. Sakura paced out its length, pleased. Jumps and flips should be avoided, it would still be all too easy to fly into a wall (or a bookcase, since most of the walls were obscured by those), but drills that included kicks and spins were now possible.

Sakura seriously considered hugging Deidara if only to see him dash away in terror. Since he had done something nice for her she kept her hands to herself. But when they brought his futon in, folding it up next to the dining table, she couldn't help touching him lightly on the arm as she spoke her thanks.

He didn't pull away, which Sakura scored as a victory, but Deidara immediately proceeded to ruin the moment by shrugging as he folded his arms across his chest and saying snidely, "You snore, okay?"

There was rather a lot of yelling after that, and when dinnertime came the two ate in silence as they studiously ignored each other.

That night, Sakura realized her living quarters were getting crowded.

More exactly, Sakura's _bathroom_ was getting crowded.

Deidara wasn't kidding when he said he needed to move some of his "stuff" into her quarters. Before repairing to his futon for the night he had placed a few things here and there in her (empty) drawers and, she discovered when preparing for bed, in her bathroom as well. There were two leather bags on the counter. One of them looked like a shaving kit (Kakashi had carried one; back in the Team 7 days she and Naruto had debated if he really had a beard or moustache under his mask and the shaving kit was just to throw them off), the other was much larger. She suspected the second bag contained Deidara's blow dryer. It was the right size, the weight felt similar to her own dryer back home, but she couldn't open either bag to check her suspicions.

He also set out shampoo and conditioner, which Sakura promptly decided she was going to use because Deidara's was unscented, and what had been provided her had a strong floral scent that would attract bugs from miles around should she ever get outside the compound. Ninjas learned early that personal hygiene products with even faint scents were bad things to use when you were trying either not to be detected or not to be eaten alive by insects who thought you were a plant.

And there was the presence of Deidara himself, who (if the first morning was any example) used every towel in the bathroom when bathing and didn't bother to hang them up once he was done. Sakura had already decided she was going to make sure _she_ got to the bathroom first from now on.

So Sakura was rather irked when she awoke the next morning to damp towels and empty rooms. Either Deidara was an early riser (somehow she doubted that), or she had started oversleeping badly. Admittedly in the past week her tension over her situation meant several sleepless nights, and with no windows and no clocks to judge the passing of time she lost the ability to know day from night except by the coming and goings of the support ninjas. Deidara had her on a schedule of sorts now, however, and she needed to realign her personal habits to his.

Clever, really. Making him her timekeeper deepened her dependence upon him. Her day would literally revolve around his doings.

One more thing to be aware of and try to resist.

After finishing with her shower Sakura shook out the (damp) towels and pointedly hung them up on the little hooks provided, hoping Deidara would take the hint. Grimacing she pulled on her clothes. After two showers in a row there was a lot of moisture in the little room; her clothes were even clammier than usual, and she couldn't dry her hair well with pre-dampened towels. After glaring at the larger bag on the counter that she _thought_ contained a blow dryer, Sakura pulled the pink strands back and held them in place by using her forehead protector as a hair band. She was getting a permanent kink in her hair from doing that. Maybe Deidara would let her use his dryer if he watched her…?

…Right. _Nothing_ intimate about standing in a shared bathroom as her captor watched her blow-dry her hair. The mere fact she had even considered it, however briefly, was dangerous; it meant she was again acting as if Deidara _weren't_ dangerous.

He had taken out Gaara.

 _The_ Gaara.

By _himself_ , if the report Sakura read was even remotely accurate.

Oh, yes; Deidara was _plenty_ dangerous. She really had to remember that.

Sakura decided her hair was short enough that even damp towels were effective enough to make do. Besides, it wasn't as if she needed to style her hair. The Akatsuki were determined to prevent her from going anywhere. So far she wasn't sure how she would make her escape; no openings had presented themselves.

(Yet.)

Sakura rinsed out the sink, grumbling because Deidara had shaved but not cleaned up after himself. How hard was it to run a little extra water? She should be glad he picked up the dishes after meals.

At the thought of a meal her stomach rumbled, not quite a growl, just a reminder that it was expecting food about now.

It was annoying to have to rely so much on another person. There weren't even any snacks in here for between meal munchies. Maybe she should mention that?

Oh, great, now she was thinking of even more ways to show Deidara how dependent upon him she was.

As Naruto would say, this situation _sucked_.

Where _was_ Deidara? Sakura wondered as she came out of the bathroom. Perhaps in the outer room lounging on his (probably unmade) futon waiting for her to wake up?

Sakura sighed, then mentally girded herself. Now was as good a time as any to deal with the whole "damp towel" issue.

When she walked out in the main room, however, it was not Deidara sitting at the dining table in the corner.

Sakura slid into a defensive stance without conscious thought, fists cocked over her chest, and snarled words at the intruder that this time she _meant_. "Touch me and you _die._ "

"Duly noted," responded Kisame with a smirk. His glance flicked towards one of the bookcases. Sakura did not make the amateurish mistake of following his gaze, instead remaining focused on him. "I'm honored that you gave my little gift such a prominent position in your living room."

Sakura couldn't risk looking away from him, and instead pushed the statement through synapses firing at hyper-speed due to the adrenal rush of the situation. She quickly realized what he meant: the oil painting. "Deidara said it wasn't art."

Kisame turned his gaze back to her, and grinned. "Heh, he wouldn't think so. That boy has no appreciation for the decorative."

If the big male meant that as a compliment of some sort, he was losing his touch. No shinobi cared to think of herself as "decorative."

Well, maybe Ino…

"What are you doing here, Kisame?" Sakura gritted out through clenched teeth.

"Taking you to breakfast," was the surprising answer. "You gotta be tired of being cooped up."

She eyed him with suspicion. " _Taking_ me…?"

He held up one hand as if to pacify her, and Sakura tried not to stare at the sharp talons (because, really, those things weren't mere _nails_ ) at the ends of his fingers. "Just down the hall to the kitchen, that's all. Deidara's there, too," he tacked on casually as he studied her with those white, staring eyes.

At the mention of her erstwhile roommate Sakura felt her stance relax, then immediately became annoyed. Hadn't she just reminded herself that Deidara was _dangerous_? And Kisame could be lying.

"There's miso ramen this morning, and some umeboshi onigiri."

 _Umeboshi…_

Her stomach growled… and this time, it _was_ a growl. Embarrassed, Sakura dropped out of her stance and crossed her hands over her waist, color rising in her cheeks.

Chuckling Kisame stood up. "No need to starve yourself out of spite. Let's go eat."

Sakura had a brief flash in her mind of a pink memorial stone, the characters spelling out _"Umeboshi was the death of her."_ But they needed her alive, and she _was_ hungry, so when Kisame opened the creaky door to her room she preceded him out of it, although she skirted him carefully as she did so.

* * *

Deidara did not care for the changes in his breakfast plans.

Admittedly, it was his own fault. _He_ had suggested that she be let out of their rooms for training purposes. The Uchiha agreed. Moreover, the Leader concurred, saying it was a way for her to become familiar with all three of the jinchuuriki's potential progenitors … just in case one of Deidara's mission "back-ups" needed to take over.

Last night, lying (alone) in his new futon listening to her breathe (breathe _loudly;_ how was that _not_ snoring?) in the room next door, Deidara had a revelation. Training was one thing, okay? Letting her blow off steam might mean fewer of those moody silences when they were alone together. However…

…he didn't want her around the other two males.

He wasn't sure why. He just _didn't_ , okay?

So when the Uchiha suggested a dry run for the potential training session just to make sure she would be comfortable around them (he was concerned, apparently, that having the three potential sires for the vessel in one place might be overwhelming for her), Deidara protested. "She's asleep, okay?"

Kisame found that very amusing. "Aw, and you were going to take her breakfast in bed? How _sweet_."

Actually, he had been going to set out cold cereal with a pitcher of milk and maybe some fruit so she could serve herself whenever she woke up, then sneak over the nearby Fire border (well, 'nearby' as the clay bird flew) for a little shopping expedition. The Leader had been appalled at his lack of foresight when Deidara reported the clothing situation and promised to send his partner (the only female in Akatsuki) on a shopping spree. The Leader hadn't been thinking about the captive's comfort, per se, just how to control her (and now that Deidara knew the prisoner a little better and had figured out _how_ her chakra was being suppressed, he had to admit the novel plan worked well against her). The Leader and his partner were in Rain Country, however, and it would be several days before any clothing deliveries could make it to the hide-out. That meant several more days of wearing damp clothes and risking her health, which certainly would put a crimp in any vessel-making plans, so Deidara decided to just go grab a few things for her. He wasn't planning on getting her anything too girly, but sweats were unisex enough that he wouldn't get embarrassed picking them out.

Of course, she could probably just wear some of his tank-tops and loose ninja pants until her real wardrobe arrived.

He should have thought of that before coming into the kitchen early. That way he could have avoided running into Kisame.

Who detained him long enough with his sly comments for the Uchiha to make an appearance.

Who _then_ suggested that maybe breakfast was a good chance for her to get used to the other males in the compound.

And somehow _Kisame_ ended up going to _their_ room to fetch her instead of _him,_ and _he_ was stuck sitting at kitchen table with the Uchiha.

Yeah, life wasn't fair. Deidara knew that already, but sometimes it _really_ wasn't fair.

The door opened. Kisame was holding it with one big palm planted near the top. With his other hand he made an elaborate sweeping gesture. There was a sharp exhale of breath before she appeared, carefully edging around Kisame as she entered the room.

The Uchiha stood up. Why was he doing that?

 _Oh. Because she's a girl._

 _That's just so… so…_

… _I should do that too, huh?_

Timing was everything. By the time Deidara even considered standing, Sakura was in a chair, hands placed flat on the table, her narrowed gaze set somewhere between the two of them as if assessing opponents before a battle.

"Thank you for joining us," said the Uchiha politely.

In the privacy of their own rooms she would have rolled her eyes and grumbled about _not having a choice_ , but here she just inclined her head and waited as if she expected something momentous to happen.

Not that Deidara blamed her. Everything momentous in _his_ life the last few days had started out in this plain little room. Hell, there would be some sort of poetry and symmetry to the act if he had his way with _her_ on the table in here.

… _Wait…_

 _Since when was he seriously considering having his way with_ her _on the table or anywhere else?!_

Oh, he knew they would have to do _it_ eventually because that was the only way to get the vessel out of her (or get it into her in the first place, as far as that went). But it was _months_ before he had to do anything more than tolerate her presence, okay?

Deidara placed a hand across his eyes. First he gets _weird_ about the other two Akatsuki members having access to her, and now _this_? What was she _doing_ to him?

"Deidara, are you all right? You're flushed." She had already reached towards him by the time he moved his hand from his eyes. Convinced he would spontaneously combust if she actually touched him Deidara flinched back into his chair, but she paused before he jerked, staring at her fingers in surprise before she scowled and dropped her hand. "Sorry, habit. I'm a medic," she explained in the Uchiha's general direction. "Using chakra to check for fevers or colds is second nature to me. I keep forgetting."

The Uchiha nodded in acknowledgement. "Yeah, that would be tough," Kisame agreed. "I'll get your ramen. You _do_ look flushed," he added to Deidara as he walked by the table. "Fever? Maybe I should get _you_ some ice water?"

There was a gleam of mockery in those pale eyes. Deidara narrowed his gaze at the other male in a manner that threatened explosive death in the near future.

"Onigiri?" suggested the Uchiha, making a brief motion to the bowl of rice balls at the table's center.

Her eyes lit up, and Deidara made a mental note that she liked rice balls. Not to be outdone by the other males he poured her a cup of tea, and despite the initial hostility she was soon at ease if not completely relaxed, responding with polite wariness to conversational gambits from Kisame and once asking the Uchiha if he could pass the onigiri back.

"So, how'd they get you?" asked Kisame as the meal was winding down. She had put away three rice balls as well as the miso ramen, but reluctantly refused when Uchiha politely offered her the last onigiri claiming she was far too full. She was nursing a cup of hot tea, probably unwilling to return to her rooms. "It couldn't have been easy."

She grinned with a hint of self-mockery. "Oh, yes it could. You haven't been told?"

"Naw, we had no idea you were here until we reported in, and no one said _how_ you got here. What happened?"

"Well, it doesn't reflect well on my abilities at all, but if you really want to hear—"

Kisame said "Sure" and the Uchiha inclined his head, but Deidara perked up because she glanced at _him_ when asking. He nodded, she grimaced wryly, and began her story with, "It started when my master called me into her office to discuss a mission…"

* * *

This situation was surreal.

Of course, Sakura had been living in "surreal" since her capture nearly … was it ten days ago? Longer? She was losing all sense of time in this place.

If one could call it "capture." It had been more like "walking into a trap so obvious even a rookie could avoid it."

ANBU had been vetting the class A and the unranked missions for some time. Several had been well-financed traps to take Naruto, so any that either specifically asked for him or seemed to have parameters that only he could match came under sharp scrutiny. A B-rank mission calling for an advanced medic to help test a new vaccine, however, was _intriguing_ rather than _suspicious_. The money was good but not outrageous, the distance wasn't too great, and it piqued the Hokage's interest enough that she asked her protégé to check it out.

Tsunade was probably pretty cheesed off at herself about now.

Well, maybe not _too_ cheesed off. They _had_ been paid in advance.

There hadn't even been a fight. Sakura showed up at the "clinic" near Fire Country's border with Sound, received a face-full of a plant-based toxin courtesy of Zetsu (who was merged with the wooden wall right next to the door), and the next thing she knew she was arguing with a hologram of Akatsuki's Leader while he ever-so-calmly explained her role in producing the needed 'vessel.'

Sakura related the story with wry humor, and Kisame and Deidara both howled. "You guys have _got_ to stop falling for that," snickered Deidara. "It's embarrassing, eh?"

"You know how village finances are. And _you_ guys keep undercutting our prices!"

Kisame smirked. "It's a living."

She looked down at her cup, smile fading. There was a sliding noise; Itachi had pushed the ceramic tea pot next to her plate, probably thinking she wanted more. He had impeccable table manners, automatically assuming the role of "host" (much to Deidara's annoyance). "Has Konaha realized that I'm missing yet?" she asked diffidently, not really expecting any of them to answer.

Scowling, Deidara grabbed the pot and filled up her cup. Sakura glanced at him with a slight frown. He was _still_ a little flushed, and he had been (mostly) quiet during the meal. Was he ill, or was he sulking over their spat last night?

Then Itachi actually answered her question, and Sakura forgot about Deidara's odd mood. "We think so. The jinchuuriki has been placed under house arrest."

"What? Why?"

After a side-long glance at his partner, "'House arrest' is a little harsh, Itachi," chided Kisame. "From what I read, it's more like 'protective custody.'"

"What happened?"

"They tried sending him on a mission to Earth Country, but apparently he's directionally challenged," said Kisame. "He was at Sound's border before they found him and hauled him back."

"Oh." Tsunade and the Council fighting about Naruto's role again, no doubt. Tsunade used to win most of those arguments, but when Naruto became the last of the jinchuuriki any Akatsuki activity in Fire Country brought the council down on them both, hard. Although there would likely be a rescue attempt, the Council would fight to keep Naruto out of it."Am I _in_ Sound? I didn't think that was your territory."

"That would be telling," said Kisame.

"Naruto wasn't close to us," Itachi told her. "Not that he couldn't have picked up the trail from there with more time or less impatience on his part, but he was days away."

"He will come for me." She glanced at Itachi, then back down to her cup. She seemed to be holding a lot of conversations using dishes as proxies these days. "He's like that. He hasn't given up on Sasuke, and he won't give up on me either."

"Yeah, well, we're kinda counting on that last one," murmured Kisame.

Sakura smiled without much humor. "Be careful what you wish for. He's not a little kid any more. He's a lot more than any of _you_ can handle."

There was an awkward pause.

"Be that as it may," the Uchiha said, "we were hoping you would also join us in training once in a while."

Her green eyes widened, and one hand lifted to touch the chain at her throat. "I'd like to train, yes, but _with_ you? That's … problematic."

Deidara jumped in, suddenly eager. "We've got an area cleared already. It would be a lot more room for you to work out. You couldn't train _with us_ with us, obviously, except for taijustsu maybe, but—"

"Take a _breath,_ kid," Kisame chuckled. "It was his idea; can you tell?"

Sakura glanced at him again, this time with a hint of gratitude in her eyes. There was a rush of color along Deidara's cheekbones again, turning her gaze into a concerned one. _Don't they have a medic? I'll have to see if they have an old-fashioned thermometer around here; he has to be running a temperature._

"It's your choice," said the Uchiha, "if you care to join us. We are aware of the limitations you are operating under, and we would not exceed those."

Deidara was still trying to conjole her. "Come on, you've been stuck here for _days_ , don't you want to see the sun again?"

Did she ever. Oh, just to get out of that dark room for a little while, and actually go outdoors and be able to tell what time of day it was…

"It's raining," Itachi pointed out mildly.

Deidara threw up his hands. Sakura was startled to see the mouths in his palms gritting their teeth in irritated mimicry of Deidara's _real_ mouth. "Whatever! That's not the point!"

"I won't melt in a little rain," said Sakura.

"Deidara will," snickered Kisame. "It messes up his hair."

"I won't melt, either!"

"I'll think about it," Sakura finally said, knowing that she would agree even though she didn't trust their motives. Anything to get out of those rooms for a while. No matter how interesting, the medical books and scrolls could only make up for so much...

"Let Deidara know if you want to," suggested Itachi. "Tomorrow, perhaps, if the weather is better. And your shoulder is still bothering you, isn't it?" This latter comment was directed at Deidara. "Best not to aggravate it by training in the rain."

"Tch."

"If you let me access my chakra, I could heal that right up."

"Even if we knew what the Leader has done to shut down your chakra channels, we wouldn't do that," replied Itachi. "We have too much respect for your _other_ abilities."

Oh, Itachi was smooth, far smoother than Sasuke. Sakura shrugged. "Worth a try."

"Trying's fine," agreed Kisame. "You want to watch out for the consequences should you succeed. They might be more than you can handle at the moment."

"Duly noted," she said to him dryly.

Kisame's resulting grin was wide enough to show all of his sharpest teeth.

* * *

Kisame insisted on escorting her back to their rooms ("I always walk my date back to her door. It's the right thing to do since you never know what's lurking around the corner." Sakura countered with, "Especially _here_ ," and they both laughed as they vanished out the door.)

Deidara didn't want to let them out of his sight, but the Uchiha paused in the doorway and his way was blocked. After an appraising look, "You have a phobia about being touched?" inquired Itachi.

 _"Excuse me_?" snarled Deidara in a tone that really meant _Eat clay and_ die _, you swirly-eyed freak._

"She started to touch you and you shrank away from her. It will be hard for you to complete this mission if that is the case."

"I _don't_ — it's just awkward, okay? We're still feeling each other out."

"Not too literally, from the looks of it," murmured the Uchiha.

Deidara blinked. Did the Uchiha just make a _joke_ at _his_ expense? The idea was so novel that he forgot to be angry. Instead he cocked his head and said, "You've been hanging around Kisame too much, eh?"

"Mostly likely," agreed the Uchiha without any evident emotion, finally moving to the side so Deidara could catch up with Kisame.


	6. Chapter 6

Title: Vessel, Part 6

Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: This chapter may be a teensy bit above the "T" rating.  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 6**

* * *

In the course of only a couple of days, Deidara had put up with a defiant Sakura, a moody Sakura, a conversational Sakura, a screaming-mad banshee Sakura, and even a snores-to-wake-the-dead Sakura.

The Sakura he was currently dealing with, the one in a good mood, was going to be the death of him. _Good-mood_ _Sakura_ was an energetic talker when she wanted to be, and right now she was so excited she couldn't stay focused on any subject. She just wouldn't _settle,_ starting a kata and then stopping, pulling a medical scroll and then leaving it unread on the table (there was quite the pile by now), chatting all the while. All Deidara had to do to participate was nod or grunt at the appropriate moment.

Locking such a bright creature up was a crime against nature. She had been on the path to slow decay, just like the little statue that she had moved to the bookcases for safekeeping, but the promise of an outing (even one that she hadn't technically agreed to yet) had her almost literally bouncing against the walls. Now she was more like one of his explosions, except that after blowing up with that almost-too-bright-to-see flash of light like his artistic bombs, she just reset and blew up _again_.

Exhausting, really.

In an effort to calm her down Deidara raided the drawers in her bedroom and brought out some of his tops and a pair of pants, suggesting that she add them to her wardrobe. She squealed and locked herself in the bathroom for a quarter of an hour. Deidara had no idea what could be taking that long. There wasn't a mirror so she couldn't be looking at herself, and how much time did it take to switch out a few shirts that were cut more-or-less the same and ran the gamut of non-color from black to white? He drummed his fingers impatiently while he waited at the table. Without _her_ in here there wasn't anything to do except read medical texts, and those things were as dull as Itachi's eyes.

"What do you think?"

Deidara looked up, and his breath caught.

 _This mission doesn't bite as badly as I thought it did at first…_

Shinobi tended not to be self-conscious about their bodies since their bodies were mere tools, but he was becoming very conscious of everything _she_ did with _her_ body. Ironically what she was wearing wasn't nearly as form-fitting as her usual medic's garb, but it did accentuate curves more than the uniform. Her legs were covered by pants ( _his_ pants) that hung so low on her hips they looked like they might fall off, and the white tank top ( _his_ white tank top) stretched in ways that it never had when he wore it. As he watched she pulled on another shirt he had given her, a black one with a scoop neck and sleeves. "Or is this better?"

Weirdly, the thin strip of pale shoulder that showed between the strap of the tank top and the sleeve of the shirt was suddenly the most enticing thing Deidara had ever seen. He shrugged to buy his voice a moment to reset, then said, "Looks fine either way," in a casual voice. He winced a bit and automatically rotated his shoulder again because shrugging created a pinching sensation.

She frowned, looked towards her bedroom, visibly reconsidered whatever she was thinking and pointed to his futon instead. "Let's roll that out."

Not too long ago he would have jumped to the ceiling at such a suggestion. Now Deidara just gave her a slightly wary glance as he grabbed one end of it to help her.

"I'm going to have a look at your shoulder," she told him. "And before you say 'without chakra,' yes, without chakra. In an emergency situation medics may practically drain their chakra while working on the badly injured, yet still need to treat the walking wounded. Probably you're going to have to lie down at some point, but let's start standing. Take off your cloak and shirt, please."

And now he was dealing with _professional Sakura_. Deidara unsnapped his cloak and shrugged it off, then pulled off his netted shirt. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head at her, however, when she reached for hem of the scoop-necked tank top. "I swear, you're the most modest ninja I ever met," she huffed.

"Naw," Deidara said with a smirk, "you're just not ready yet, okay?"

She rolled her eyes and chuckled and told him to turn around, and to Deidara's relief the moment passed because, although he deliberately kept his tone light, she really _wasn't_ ready to see his chest.

Her touch was firmer than Deidara expected, no hesitation in it at all. She had him move his shoulder and his arm in various ways. He heard the frown in her voice. "It's not your shoulder joint, not any of the rotator muscles from the upper arm. It may be a kinked or trapped nerve along the spinal column. I'm going to press a few areas, so tell me where it hurts. Can you hold your hair out of the way, please?" She started at his neck, lifting slightly on her toes and pressing her thumbs on either side before moving down disk-by-disk along his spine. Mid-back proved a tender area but she kept going, and Deidara began to wonder if he would have to strip out of his pants, too. But when she pressed right above the waistband he jolted away from her, nearly tripping over the futon's edge.

She 'hmmm'd' in puzzlement. "If you're hurting there you should really be feeling the pain up and down your leg. There may be a compounding complication from the other disk you said was tender. Lie down on your stomach, please."

It was hard to say "no" to a woman who was wearing his clothes. Deidara plopped down on the futon, folding his arms as he propped his chin on one wrist. He felt the give to the futon as she followed him, then to his shock there was a shift on his other side as well.

She was _straddling_ him, knees to either side of his hips.

"I have to do this for leverage," she said. "Don't get turned on or anything."

The latter was said so _professionally_ that he knew it was another routine phrase used to ease the tension inherent in the situation.

Too late, though.

Technically she wasn't even sitting on him since she was balanced on her knees, nor was she touching him anywhere except with her fingertips and sometimes a palm as she moved his hair out of the way and retraced the path down his spinal column with slightly more pressure, but the _heat_ of her and just the suggestion that he would be able to feel her weight on his hips if she shifted just a bit, well, that was all it took.

How did _this_ happen? Deidara was confused.

(Which _did_ seem to be happening a lot lately.)

Oh, he understood the _concept_ of erections, he was a healthy young man and had been getting them on a regular basis for years, but usually it was something he just sort of woke up with. He'd never had one _inspired_ by another human being before.

Absently, Deidara wondered which 'base' this counted as.

She continued in the professional tone, telling him that she was tapping down his spine looking for muscle twitches that would indicate where she needed to press ("which would be easier to do with your shirt off"), but Deidara wasn't really listening to her words as much as the rise and fall of them. Eyes half closed he fell into a near-hypnotized state, trying _not_ to rock his hips into the mattress (he had a feeling that would be a dead giveaway), lost in a sensual haze tuned to the lilt of her voice ("this is going to hurt," she was saying but he was half-imagining rolling to his back and running his own fingers up her arms and cupping her-)

The next moment he shrieked as he tried to jerk away again, but the futon got in the way of his escape attempt. "One more," she warned, heels of her hands placed firmly against his spine, one mid-back, one considerably lower. Deidara swore he heard a 'crack' as she pressed down unequally, more weight on her lower hand, and he wondered if he had done something _really_ stupid by allowing a freakin' _prisoner_ free reign with his spinal column.

He didn't know about the shoulder, but whatever she just did was _painfully_ effective at curing a raging hard-on, that was for sure.

"All done," she said cheerfully. "Sit up and let's see if that helped."

 _You have no_ idea _how much that 'helped',_ Deidara thought rather viciously, but he sat up cross-legged and rotated his shoulder, discovering that the pinching sensation was gone. She manipulated his arm and shoulder from behind again and pronounced herself satisfied, although he still flinched when she touched his lower back.

"It's just inflammation now," she said, sounding annoyed. "Really, I could clear it up in two seconds if I could use my chakra. That reminds me, though, you were flushed at breakfast." And just like that she crawled around so that she was facing him, one hand on his forehead and the thumb of the other under one of his eyes, and he was staring at a part of her body that made it clear just _how_ differently his top fit her.

There was a new twitch in an area considerably south of his shoulder.

Deidara quickly rolled his eyes up in his head, staring fixedly at the underside of her chin.

"Hmm, you don't feel too warm." She covered his right eye with her hand and quickly uncovered it, apparently checking the pupil response, and frowned when she pushed his hair aside and did the same thing to his other eye. "How does that scope of yours operate? This eye shows a definite lag in response time."

 _Oh, no lag in response time_ here, _believe it, eh._

"You're flushed again," she said in disapproval, sliding her fingers down his face, tracing his cheeks and then, just as he was about to say _the hell with it_ and lean into her, she jabbed her thumbs underneath his jaw, which made him sit up ramrod straight. Then those thumbs began a slight massaging motion as she muttered, "Glands aren't swollen, hmmm."

He had never had a nosebleed in his life, yet Deidara somehow knew he was about half-a-second away from one now. There was only so much innuendo ( _and_ massaging) a healthy male could take, okay?

The situation, Deidara decided, required a variation of the truth. "I couldn't _possibly_ be blushing because _someone_ is almost sitting in my lap, eh?"

She slanted a startled gaze down at him, and suddenly flushed bright red herself as if just realizing how close she was and where he would be looking if he leveled his gaze and _they were on_ his _futon one step away from being supine_. She backed off in a hurry, scrambling to her feet at the futon's edge and chuckling a bit nervously as well as (he grinned) blushing hard enough for the color to clash with her hair. "Well, the shoulder's fine, then. I'll just, ah," she ran to the table by the door, the one with the huge scroll box on it, "I'll just look up some anti-inflammatory recipes. If you get me the ingredients I can mix it up for you."

Clasping his arms around his knees, Deidara watched as she pulled some scrolls out, put a couple back after scanning them quickly, then brought the rest to the dining table. She was a little pink across the cheekbones still, but most of her blush was gone. The studious expression was taking over her face. He recognized by a slight pinching of her brows that she was now more interested in studying than in him.

Well, at least he would have a few moments of quiet.

…Quiet was over-rated. Besides, he much preferred it when her attention was focused on _him_.

"You're reading too much," said Deidara. "Reading's bad for your health."

"What?" She glanced over at him, frowned slightly, and returned to her scroll. "That's silly. It's only an old wife's tale that the strain on your eyes injures them."

Mouth ticking up at a corner, Deidara recalled another part of the recent conversation he and the others had with The Leader:

" _You want to give your master's books to the woman who killed him?" It was said without a note of incredulity; the Leader sounded like it was just one more item to add to the shopping list and he wanted to make sure he had the size right._

 _Deidara shrugged. "She wanted art books. I don't know what she likes, but she participated in his last big art project, okay? She's going to have more in common with_ his _view of art than_ mine _. So if Master Sasori had anything, yeah, send 'em here. It's not like he's going to care."_

" _Your devotion to your master is_ truly _touching," muttered Kisame._

 _Which reminded him, actually._

" _Don't_ do _anything to Master Sasori's stuff, okay?" Deidara told the Leader's hazy image. "_ That _he_ would _mind."_

 _Itachi glanced at Deidara quizzically. The Leader, after a pause, said in a monotone voice, "Of course not."_

"Trust me," said Deidara, "reading's _very_ bad for your health, okay?"

She flicked him another little glance, shook her head, and returned to her studying. "Is there paper in here anywhere? I need to write some things down."

"I'll get it for you." Deidara grabbed his netted shirt and pulled it over his tank top, then stood up and away from the futon. Snagging his Akatsuki cloak, he shrugged it on and walked close to the table as he worked on the fastenings. "So," he asked, ever so casually, "we on for tomorrow?"

She sighed, not looking at him as one hand ran through her short pink strands. "Yes," she grumbled, sounding vaguely put-upon.

Absurdly Deidara felt as if he had just successfully asked her out on a date. He was grinning like a maniac when he left.

* * *

As soon as she woke up the next morning, Sakura was catapulted into a state of nervous excitement.

Intellectually she knew it was artificial. Simply being allowed outside shouldn't engender this level of excitement, but her captivity in that never-changing room was _getting_ to her and any break in the routine was like a vacation.

Which was, Sakura reminded herself, _purposeful manipulation_ on the part of her captors…

…and it was working. She _knew_ what they were doing, and it was _still_ working.

Sakura would never dismiss a cliché out-of-hand again.

Sighing, she got out of bed. When she went into the bathroom, however, Sakura again got the feeling it was going to be a _good_ day because, this time, it was a _dry_ bathroom. Finally she was the first one in!

She flittered about in a way that was unusual for her. Sakura had no idea where they were, geographically speaking, which meant she didn't know what "outside" was like. Should she just wear her medic uniform, or layer on Deidara's clothes until she was as thick as a snowman? Sakura settled on a combination of the two, the shorts from her uniform with Deidara's pants over it, then a tank top with the t-shirt and her jounin vest over that. She craned her head over her shoulder trying to see what the pants looked like from behind, then gave herself a little shake. She was going to be working out; it didn't matter what anything looked like. Towel-drying her hair as best as she could (and eyeing the larger of Deidara's bags in irritation), she contained the pink strands as usual by using her forehead protector as a headband.

When she finally walked out, there was Deidara.

He was leaning in the doorway of her bedroom, a light scowl across his face, Akatsuki cloak on but unfastened, glimpses of pants and shirts in place underneath. "What do you _do_ in there?"

Sakura grinned. "I am a medic, y'know. I'd be happy to explain the entire process of elimination starting with—"

He clapped his hands over his ears, at the same time trying not to smirk. "Can't hear you; not listening!"

"Oh, like it doesn't take you forever to blow-dry your hair," she retorted. She sat down on the edge of the bed. "All yours. Please notice that I left not one but _two_ dry towels for you."

"Yeah, yeah; you're all consideration, huh," Deidara grumbled as he walked past her, but that half-smirk broke free and pressed against his lips just as he closed the door.

It was all rather _touchingly_ domestic.

Talk about an artificial situation. She depended upon him for food, for social contact, hell, for something as simple as paper to write a list on. Sakura braced a palm against her forehead, shaking her head.

Deidara was going to be problematic. Oh, Sakura had known that from the moment she uncovered her eyes and realized she was pointing right at his dumbstruck face, but the problems were not the ones she originally envisioned.

He was young, younger than she realized when she saw him that first time, sitting at ease on Gaara's body as he coolly discussed the philosophical underpinnings of art with his master. When _not_ fighting he was a little raw the way Naruto had been as a boy, a little clueless the way Sai still was. All in all, Deidara was not what she expected in one of the more powerful members of the Akatsuki.

And yesterday Sakura had realized for the very first time as she practically sat in his lap (and discovered he was _blushing_ rather than _feverish_ ) that Deidara was _attractive_. Nothing like Sasuke or Itachi, not dark-brooding-tormented-silent attractive, but bright-alive-mocking-maddening attractive. In her determination _not_ to be a victim she somehow missed that little tidbit.

Sakura was very aware of it now.

 _He's dangerous, he's dangerous…_

The door opened and Deidara stood framed with the light behind him, hands over his head as he clipped his hairpiece into that mane of blond hair. He wasn't wearing the cloak yet, just a short-sleeved black shirt, and the movement delineated the long muscles of his upper arms, showing off his shoulders. Then he caught her eye as she stood up, and grinned that wide, half-mad smirk of his.

… _gods, is he dangerous…_

"What's the plan?" Sakura finally asked, and was proud when her voice came out perfectly normal.

Turning, he reached behind him, and the next instant was pulling on the black cloak. "Late morning, okay? Breakfast first, then spend some time digesting."

He paused next to her while he finished snapping up the robe. Sakura had an insane desire to help, maybe holding his long hair out of the way, or straightening his collar, or something equally wife-like. She folded her arms over her midsection, refusing to give in. Deidara wasn't her lover. He wasn't even her _friend_. These urges were false, brought on by the situation and her own innate empathy for those around her.

Apparently the qualities that made her a good medic also made her a good captive.

 _Great. Just what I_ wanted _to discover about myself..._

"Any requests, eh?" Deidara asked, looking down at her with his head tilted to the side.

It took Sakura a moment to realize he was asking what she wanted for breakfast, not indulging in any innuendo regarding the proximity of that oversized bed they stood next to. Evidently her mind was far more in the gutter than his. "Surprise me," she said.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I've been told my cooking is 'surprising'."

"You can always get Itachi to scramble more eggs," Sakura responded, lightly mocking.

Deidara's smile didn't fade completely although it dimmed somewhat. His expression turned almost serious. "Naw, I can take care of you, okay?"

Sakura blinked, but he was already moving out of the room. The creaky door closed behind him.


	7. Chapter 7

Title: Vessel, Part 7  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 7**

* * *

Carved as it was out of bedrock, sound couldn't help but bounce off the hallways of the Akatsuki's hideout, especially if the one making the sound had raised her voice in irritation. "Of course I'm not lost! I'm in _your_ top secret base, right? How can I be lost?!"

Kisame paused just outside his rooms, brows raised slightly. _She_ was out and about …?

"Not that way, okay? " responded an aggrieved voice. "You don't know where you're going, _slow_ _down._ "

The corner of Kisame's mouth pressed up. It was annoying, but the kid had a deep voice, deeper than his own. It was the underlying petulant impatience that gave away his youth. At least it meant Deidara was keeping an eye on their captive and not just letting her wander the halls unsupervised. The layout was deliberately confusing in case of invasion, but she still might find the exit if she stumbled around enough.

Apparently little Sakura was very anxious to train, or just to get outside. Couldn't blame her there; hell, Kisame knew he'd go as crazy as Itachi if he couldn't go out once in a while. Underground bases were convenient and all, but _man_ , were they heavy on the ominous atmosphere.

If the two were heading topside, they would have to pass by him. Kisame braced one hand against the opposite wall, effectively turning himself into a living barrier, and waited.

Sakura came barreling around the corner first, braking to a halt when she saw him, eyes wide. Deidara nearly ran her over. He had to throw his hands out to the side to keep his balance, palms making a dull sound as they slapped against the walls on either side of the hall. _Hmmm, still avoiding contact with her. Not good._ "Oh, it's you," the younger man said ungraciously. Sakura started and hastily greeted Kisame, as if to make up for Deidara's rudeness.

"What's your hurry?" asked Kisame, making a show of surprise. "We're usually through a dozen kata before you even show up for training."

Deidara jerked his head towards Sakura. "She couldn't wait. We're going to need to put a leash on her."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Right, like I can go anyplace! For all I know, we're in Mist. Water walking back to the continent isn't my idea of a fun outing out."

She was dressed differently. Loose pants, t-shirt? _She's wearing_ his _clothes. Interesting._ Kisame cocked his head and grinned. "New look? Heh, she looks much better in that than _you_ do."

Deidara shrugged, refusing to rise to the bait. "What? I agree, okay?" The girl looked back at him, a hint of color brushing her cheeks.

 _Interesting,_ thought Kisame again. "Well, let's get going then."

Itachi was waiting for them at one of the branches in the hallway, evidently having heard Deidara's and Sakura's bickering along the way. "It's like babysitting," Kisame muttered to him out of the side of his mouth as he went by.

"I _heard_ that!" Deidara snapped.

Itachi gave his usual polite greeting to the girl, which she responded to cautiously. There was a pause; Kisame glanced back to see the Uchiha gesturing, indicating Sakura go first. It was just that ingrained aristocratic politeness of his, but she skirted him carefully and watched him closely as she passed.

 _She's better, but she's still skittish as hell around the two of us._

Kisame really couldn't blame her for that, either.

He stopped before the short staircase that led to the outside world, turning to wait. The girl and Deidara were arguing again; she had one hand to his wrist. At first Kisame thought Deidara was pulling away once more and gave a minute shake of his head, then he realized that the younger man was _ignoring_ her touch, adjusting his scope in spite of her earnest efforts to stop him. "Are you putting that thing on? I _told_ you, it's affecting your eyesight!"

"Hey, I'm a distance fighter, okay? What do you expect me to do, zero in on the enemy by squinting?"

There was a bit of a tugging match as Deidara finished putting on the scope. Sakura was still trying to get at it. He covered it protectively with his hand, smirking at her as he shook his hair over his face to deliberately obscure it. When she gripped his hand to pull it away from his face, he rotated his wrist around so that his palm was against hers. Suddenly Sakura jerked back, eyes wide in her face as she started at her hand incredulously, then back at Deidara's amused visage. Apparently, he had either nipped her or _licked_ her using the mouth on his palm.

"Gotta watch where you put your fingers," Deidara murmured, eyes half-closed as he looked down at her. Itachi couldn't see it because he was behind her, but Sakura blushed _vividly_ , holding her own hand, thumb brushing across the palm as she stared back at Deidara.

 _Whoa. Sexual tension much?_

Kisame breathed a silent sigh of relief because, when it came down to it, she _was_ too young for him and he'd feel bad about … well, he would feel _bad_. Sure, if the Leader changed his mind and decided she was useless Kisame would take that pretty head of hers off with only the barest twinge of regret, but this _current_ plan…

Most missing-nin with bloodline limits usually _became_ missing-nin because they had issues about their bloodline limit. Whether it was the home village's proprietary ownership of the limit or the clan's selective breeding to preserve it or something even more seedy involving the maintenance of the limit's purity didn't really matter; the point was that this assignment struck a little too close to home for both him and Itachi. They weren't much alike, but in this case they both agreed; they had an aversion to being treated as breeding stock.

"Ready?" Kisame asked in Sakura's general direction, and opened the overhead doors that led to the outside.

She sprinted by him as Kisame threw back the doors. There was a collective tensing among the Akatsuki members, but she didn't go far. Sakura skidded to a stop only a few feet away, took a deep breath of air so fresh it stung, and flung her arms out, spinning in a circle.

"You fall down, I am not picking you up," Kisame told her, amused.

He was not fooled. Sakura was giddy, yes, but not oblivious. Quick glances as she turned cataloged her surroundings. Kisame could see her shinobi mind processing the information: thick conifers, a touch of mist still in the late-morning sunshine, rain that had only recently stopped falling…

"I smell the ocean!" Sakura exclaimed. "We _are_ in Water Country, aren't we?"

"That would be telling," said Kisame as he had once before.

She looked back over her shoulder, rocking back and forth on her feet, anxious to move. "Can I run?"

"Don't get ahead of us," warned Itachi from the base of the stairs.

Sakura dashed back to the doors, reaching towards Deidara who was still on the second step, more inside than outside. "Deidara, run with me!" She was bouncing around him in her excitement.

He grinned and turned his head away, pretending to be uninterested. "Bah, why? It's not like you can keep up, eh?"

But she grabbed him by the sleeve and tried to drag him along, and even though he pretended to dig in his heels soon they were sprinting away, Sakura letting out shrill play screams as Deidara stayed just behind her even though he could easily outpace her. They disappeared into the conifers, and for a moment there was blessed silence.

It was broken by Kisame's heart-felt sigh. "Those two make me feel really old."

The Uchiha glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. "You _are_ really old," he said blandly.

"Ha, ha. You don't have to worry about Deidara. The kid's got it bad."

"That," murmured the Uchiha, "is exactly what worries me."

* * *

Although Deidara was chasing after Sakura, at the same time he managed to herd her in the direction she needed to go, and soon they broke through the trees into the clearing created over the last few days as the Akatsuki members trained. She let out another squeal. Deidara thought his eardrums were permanently damaged.

It was just that, a clearing, no fighting dummies to practice techniques on, no targets for ranged attacks. Nothing to get excited about, but Sakura was giddy with it. Deidara laughed at her, and swept an arm out. "There, plenty of room for your girly flips and whatnot."

"Is there anything to hit? I really want to hit something."

The Akatsuki members usually hit each other during training, but of course that wasn't possible for Sakura. Deidara performed a quick series of hand seals, and with a brief "poof" of smoke a wooden dummy appeared.

One with dark twigs approximating hair, wearing the Akatsuki cloak and with a head protector placed haphazardly about where the eyes were. A protector that had a leaf (a _real_ leaf) with an "X" over it.

"Go for it," he said with a smirk.

"You're bad," responded Sakura severely, but in the next instance she had launched herself at the dummy with a loud "Hai!" and was soon beating it up with enthusiasm.

Arriving at the far side of the field, Kisame shoved Itachi lightly in the arm and nodded at the new training tool. The Uchiha looked, raised an eyebrow at the laughing Deidara, and turned his back.

It felt good to take her aggression out on something, even if it was just a pseudo-Itachi. Sakura had a lot of aggression, it seemed. At the end of half an hour her raw knuckles throbbed, and the wooden dummy was listing at a peculiar angle. It was missing a couple of limbs.

She didn't need chakra to know she was being watched. Deidara and Kisame were on the far side of the clearing but Itachi trained by himself nearby. At first he used shadow clones but the last of those had popped out of existence a few moments earlier. Now he stood maybe a dozen feet away, openly observing her.

It was foolish to pretend she hadn't noticed. Sakura raised her voice slightly to be heard, but didn't look towards him. "I suppose you're going to correct my stance or something."

"I find no fault in your stance. Your choice of sparring partners, perhaps."

Sakura's mouth twisted wryly. "Going to suggest I try the real thing?"

"If you like," he said after a moment.

 _Wha—?!_

Sakura spun in his direction, alarmed, because sparring with _Uchiha Itachi_ without chakra sounded like something someone with a death wish would do, and although she hated her current situation, she had been truthful when she told Deidara that she wasn't suicidal.

The Uchiha was unsnapping the high neck of his cloak.

Evidently he was serious.

 _Help!_ she thought, frantically casting her glance across the clearing to Deidara.

(Would Deidara even help her?)

She found him perched atop a clay bird hovering high over the field, holding a palm straight down as the tongue there wiggled at Kisame. Meanwhile, Kisame was shaking a fist demanding that Deidara come down and "fight like the brat you are!"

Neither of them had noticed her predicament.

Not a lot of help there, it seemed.

(He _promised_ to take care of her.)

 _I am shinobi. I don't_ need _anyone to take care of me._

The Uchiha paused as he unfastened his robe. Without chakra Sakura couldn't mask her emotions; he probably felt a flash of fear from her. His hands came together, performing a quick seal before Sakura could even flinch. Involuntarily she glanced down at herself, but nothing seemed to be wrong. Meanwhile the Uchiha finished unsnapping his robe and shrugged it off.

Several yards away, Kisame paused. Deidara brought the clay bird he rode low to the ground, visible eye wide with surprise. "The _hell—_?"

"His chakra's shut down," noted Kisame.

"I can _tell_ that, okay?" Deidara's hand was already chewing clay, spitting it out as he finished speaking. He quickly formed it into a leaping bug that could drive Sakura away from the defenseless Itachi without hurting either of them (well, without hurting _her_ , anyway), but Kisame gave a slash with his sword near Deidara's ear and suddenly the clay figure was useless. "What are you doing!?"

"Stop it, Deidara. It's not something she did to him. He did it on purpose. He does that when we're in towns sometimes."

"Oh?" A sly expression crossed Deidara's face as he reached into his pouch for more clay. "That's different, eh?"

Kisame slanted a glance over at the smaller man. "And _now_ what are you up to?"

Deidara's grin was even more manic than usual. He nearly drooled at the thought of creating an explosion that would make _the_ Uchiha jump and squeal like a little girl. "Art!"

Sighing, Kisame held his massive sword straight out to the side. The broad tip of it rested under the clay bird's neck. "Don't even try it, Deidara."

Deidara subsided, grumbling that no one appreciated the uniqueness of his art form.

Meanwhile:

"No weapons, no chakra," said the Uchiha to the wary Sakura as he tossed his robe to the side. "Just technique."

* * *

Genjutsu was her specialty when she was younger. She had a unique ability to warp the mind's perception of reality. Her taijutsu, however, was so weak her skills were openly mocked by other chuunin her age.

That was before Sakura's training by Konoha's Hokage. Although in many ways what Tsunade taught relied on raw, brute force, her hand to hand skills had greatly improved.

She had not, after all, become a jounin based on her looks.

The man facing her was also a genjutsu specialist. Team Kakashi had once faced off against a clone of Itachi's, one so like him that even Kakashi himself didn't realize the truth until after the battle was over. Most of the battle Sakura spent with her back to the clone, pouring chakra into Naruto to break him out of a genjutsu. Itachi was mentally powerful, but she had no sense of his physical fighting skills.

 _Sasuke's_ physical fighting skills were phenomenal.

No reason to think his elder brother, captain of an ANBU squad at age thirteen, was any less skilled.

Itachi settled into a battle stance, studying her as carefully as she studied him. Evidently he was in no hurry to make the first move.

The first move might be the only shot she had.

Sakura clasped her hands in front of her in what would have been the first seal of a focusing jutsu if she could access her chakra. It wasn't that she had forgotten; it was familiar to her, and just going through the motion calmed her down. A deep breath, then she sprang at him.

 _Fulcrum_. Sakura did not so much _think_ the word as _become_ it. _My body is a fulcrum._ Her focus narrowed to Itachi's body, not seeing shoulders, torso, feet, but angular shapes, pivot points, distribution of mass. She slid in low under his strike, knees bent deeply, shoulder turning away from Itachi's body.

For an instance, he couldn't read her.

By the time he could, it was too late.

Her shoulder lodged in his armpit, her leading leg remained straight as it struck _through_ his stance, her hands clamped around his forearm. She barely had to exert any weight; his own momentum flung him over and away from her.

Most fighters would have landed ingloriously on their back, but Itachi adjusted in mid-air. He came down half-sprawled, feet wide apart and one hand down, landing hard enough that his long skid left furrows in the field. The hand that wasn't down was out to the side, partially for balance, but as he repositioned himself into a crouch he flexed it several times, as if cajoling it into working.

A self-satisfied grin flickered across Sakura's face, quickly gone as the Uchiha regained his balance. She sank into a fighting stance, eyes on his as her fists were held in a ready position across her chest.

The Uchiha's mouth flattened out in what may have been a smile. Then he launched towards her again.

* * *

"Her form is good," murmured Kisame, watching the contest with narrowed eyes.

Deidara grunted. He didn't especially want to hear anyone talking about her form.

"What happened with Sasori?" Kisame asked unexpectedly. "Did you ask her?"

 _Where had that come from?_ "No," Deidara replied, without mentioning that she had offered to tell him. Really, the details didn't matter since the performance that led to his master's death was a moment now years in the past. What difference did "knowing" make? Sasori was still dead and Deidara couldn't go back in time to enjoy and appreciate his master's final artistic endeavor.

"Maybe you should. Even without chakra, she uses pressure points with uncanny accuracy."

That was why the Uchiha was favoring one hand; she had done something to it in that very first move when she slipped through his guard. Deidara rolled his shoulder unconsciously, feeling again that _pinch and release_ sensation as she worked down his spine. Yeah, it _had_ been stupid to lie there like an idiot and let an enemy play with one of the most easy-to-damage parts of the human body.

(He'd let her do it again in a heartbeat, but Kisame had stubbornly refused to injure him enough to require any treatment from her. Maybe next time…)

The two weren't evenly matched. Itachi was faster and stronger even without chakra, but she was fighting smart. She didn't block so much as push his blows to the side, and she was limber enough to get under a lot of his kicks without damage.

"She's dangerous," said Kisame, sounding both surprised and intrigued. "I read the report, I know what she can do with her perfect chakra control, but she's dangerous without chakra."

The brief battle ended. The Uchiha suddenly moved too fast in countering one of her moves. He pulled up with a hand held out flat in her direction, shaking his head. The blocks had released and chakra was flowing through him again; the fight was too unequal to continue.

He said something to her, too quietly for the other two males to hear, then bowed before walking away. She didn't take her eyes off him until he was well away, and when she went back to the training dummy she made sure she was positioned where she could see him.

Obviously she didn't trust the Uchiha.

Well, she was supposed to be smart. Not trusting the Uchiha just proved _how_ smart she was.

Deidara didn't like the Uchiha.

He had _never_ liked the Uchiha.

Using that sharingan of his to win battles—well, it was _cheating_ , okay?

Not that Deidara had anything in particular against cheating, but there was no _art_ involved in genjutsu. It was all childish mind games.

After watching him spar with Sakura, Deidara was sure there was another reason to not like the Uchiha.

He wasn't sure what that reason was. Really, he didn't particularly _care_ what the reason was. He just knew, subconsciously, that another one now existed, and it had been added near the very top of his already lengthy list.


	8. Chapter 8

Title: Vessel, Part 8  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: R or Mature, depending on the archive  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 8**

* * *

The days fell into a pattern. Eating breakfast and dinner with Deidara, sharing the lunch meal in the kitchen with whoever happened to be in attendance (the Uchiha wasn't always there, and sometimes some of the support ninjas were; although they lacked free will they weren't zombies and still needed to eat), and sparring every few days outside. Sakura proved surprisingly effective against Kisame. His vampiric sword Samahada was little use against someone who didn't have chakra (well, as long as it didn't actually connect, then there would be nothing left but a smear), but when he didn't use chakra _she_ was faster and more nimble.

Training against Deidara was far more problematic, because he wasn't interested in playing fair, wouldn't submit to any chakra blocking techniques, and was quite happy bombarding her from a distance with very low level constructs that would shower her with dust when they blew up near her. "BOOM! You're dead! BOOM! You're dead _again_! BOOM! You are _so_ dead! BOOM! How can you get any deader?"

" _I'll show you dead!_ " shrieked Sakura, and the chase would be on.

Sometimes they would take lunch outside, and Sakura could almost pretend she was a genin again, training in the woods near Konoha with Team 7. Itachi was a dead ringer for Sasuke in more ways than one, and Deidara could pass as the evil version of Naruto especially since his snit fits were similar to the tantrums Naruto threw as a child.

Of course, that would make Kisame Kakashi…

…which didn't work at all. Still, it was mildly nostalgic for various reasons.

And very disturbing for others.

Some nights Sakura and Deidara played cards (he cheated, badly, and didn't care when he got caught) or shoji (they both played badly, but the arguments were fun). She continued her medical studies, wondering out loud if she could smuggle some of the texts with her when she escaped. Deidara, smirking, told her she never would escape as long as she was so addicted to reading.

Clothing arrived, including practical ninja garb and sleep wear and not-so-practical dresses and even an elaborate kimono. A couple days after that some scrolls and a few books were piled on the table when she came back after training. When she examined them Sakura discovered that the books weren't more purloined medical texts but were related to the performing arts. One was a history of kabuki theatre, another was a pictorial encyclopedia of formal kimono. The scrolls were battle puppetry techniques, which she added to her mental list of _things I'm taking with me when I get out of here._ Tsunade could use them as diplomatic gifts for the Leaf's allies in the Sand's hidden village.

It did give Sakura something new to talk about with Deidara for a few days because, as it turned out, he liked some forms of live theatre and years training with Sasori gave him an appreciation of puppetry. She tried to talk about his master again, but he was as closed as ever on the subject.

One day when they were outside Itachi mentioned there was a bite to the air, Kisame agreed that it would likely snow in the next week or so, and Deidara grumbled that he _hated_ snow because it made his clay harder to work with. Sakura stood stock still for a second, eyes wide, because it had been a while since she thought about _time_ as something that was continuing to pass. She had been taken in early summer. Amid the conifers there weren't the same signs of seasons as with Fire Country's deciduous trees, but what her companions said meant that it was late fall, perhaps even early winter. She had been missing for at least four months, and perhaps as long as six.

" _Try not to think about it too much, okay?" Deidara advised as he worked on the little clay figure. "There's a good six months before the Leader will even ask how things are going."_

…The Leader was going to ask soon.

And he might not be displeased with the answers the others would give him.

"It's one thing to be compassionate, another to be indulgent," Yamato had once said, but compassion was Sakura's way of the ninja and it was so much a part of her that it was hard to tell when it veered into "indulgent" territory. In this instance, it was going to get her either pregnant or killed or, eventually, both since she couldn't believe the Leader would ever let her go.

She was forging _relationships_ with these people.

Relationships that felt real, even though she knew they couldn't be.

…Weird.

Or merely 'propinquity', as Deidara had said the first night.

Deidara.

She was around him a lot.

It was a text book case.

She _knew_ that.

And yet…

She was getting attached to him.

He had relaxed around her considerably. There was even a bit of warmth in his eyes when he looked at her sometimes, and occasionally that smirk of his wasn't all that mocking.

Sakura would instigate contact with him because she was a tactile person and often didn't even notice when she did it. A hand to his shoulder, a touch to his arm. He no longer shied away from her.

Dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

 _When had she forgotten that?_

After breakfast the next morning (sometimes they ate meals like an old married couple, in silence as she read a book and he absently played with clay) Sakura pushed aside her plate, propped her chin on the heels of her hands, and said, "We need to talk."

She knew nothing about his upbringing, but apparently his father never gave him the lecture that discussed "danger signs in the opposite sex" because instead of flinching like a normal man when those words were uttered in his presence by a female, Deidara looked interested and said, "Yeah? About what, eh?"

"About," said Sakura, "why I'm here. About your mission. Have you thought about it?"

" _What_ about it?" he asked again, apparently with perfect sincerity.

"The reason behind this 'mission'," Sakura repeated with exaggerated patience.

Deidara smirked and lowered his eyes, but he didn't blush. He was used to her; it had been a while since he last blushed. "What, doing you?"

"I'm serious!"

"I'm not?" he wondered, but he let it go. "Thought _what_ about the mission?"

"The baby."

Deidara shrugged. "A vessel's needed for the jinchuuriki, okay? Not a big deal."

"You wouldn't say that if you were the one who had to give birth."

He actually laughed. "Heh, probably not."

Sakura felt the threads of her temper tightening. "It would be your baby, too."

Deidara looked considerably startled. "Naw, it's just—"

"'A means to an end'? A 'vessel'?" She slapped her hands down on the table and sprang up, the way she had during that very first meeting. Leaning over the wooden surface, she stared into his face and said with cold precision, "It's a child, Deidara, a _child_. _Your_ child. Are you willing to sacrifice _your_ child?"

There was no longer any hint of amusement in his expression. Deidara eyed her carefully, as if finally realizing that this _was_ a serious conversation. "'Sacrifice' is harsh, okay?"

" _It is not harsh._ I know what it was like for Gaara growing up, I _saw_ what it was like for Naruto! I don't _care_ why your idiot Leader wants a jinchuuriki or three, but I'm not letting that happen to my baby!"

A frown line developed next to the bangs that covered Deidara's face, an indication of brows being pulled together. "Seeing as there _isn't_ a baby yet, there's no point in getting upset _now_."

"That's the _point_ of having the conversation now," Sakura growled between set teeth. "If this happens the way your Leader wants it to happen, I have to _know_ —" and she stopped, and scowled, because she _already_ knew she couldn't trust Deidara or the other potential fathers.

It just _felt_ like she could, sometimes.

Propinquity was a _bitch_ , really.

"Know _what_?" prodded Deidara.

It didn't help that he was sitting there regarding her earnestly, his expression (what she could see of it) an odd combination of irritation and concern, typical of a man dealing with one of _those_ conversations instigated by his mate.

Sakura got _angry_.

It was all _fake_.

She was she-didn't-know-where, _countries_ away from people who _really_ cared about her, she couldn't use her chakra, she was tired of being passive waiting for an opening that hadn't happened yet, _and time was running out._

Sakura shoved away from the table so hard the chair toppled sideways. For a moment she stood with hands clenched, breathing hard, then she rounded the table to Deidara's side, grabbed him by the open high collar of his black cloak, tugged him out of the chair and slammed him as hard as she could against the stone wall.

He didn't stop her.

He didn't pull away.

He also didn't make any move towards her. Deidara went very still, watching her anxiously, _worried_ about her because this _propinquity_ thing worked both ways and he _did_ care about her, even knowing as well as she did how _false_ the situation was. With every phrase Sakura hissed out between angry lips she shoved him against the wall once more, and it only fed into her anger because he was _indulging_ her when _she_ was the stronger of the two and _she should have been able to slam him through the goddamned wall._ "I don't care how cute you are, I don't care how lonely I am, I don't care if I _want_ to, dammit _, I'm not putting my child through that."_

Deidara shook his head. "We don't have a choice," he said quietly.

" _There's always a choice."_

"Is there? Did you choose to be here, huh?"

She stared at him blankly because he knew the answer, but the answer contradicted her argument so Sakura dropped her hands, tightened her mouth and didn't reply.

He finally raised one of his hands, skating it so-carefully up one of her arms, fingers trailing to her throat. The palm pressed against her skin as the fingers stroked delicately to one side, the thumb to the other, the mouth open so she could feel just the edge of the teeth embedded there. He wasn't hurting her but she had to stretch her chin up anyway to accommodate his grip; his hand was big compared to her neck. "If I take you now," he said conversationally, refusing to look away from her eyes, " _do you have a choice?"_

Again, she did not answer.

"There is no choice, Sakura." It was the first time Deidara had ever used her name, and the way he spoke it was cold and frightening.

"I won't agree," Sakura finally said, striving to keep her voice even although speaking forced her throat and jaw to move against that gentle, relentless, _terrifying_ grip. "I won't agree to it. _That's_ my choice."

(And _that_ nearly made him flinch, because there were some pretty dreams stuffed in the back of his head, ones he didn't know existed until they all snuffed out at once.)

"I'm sorry to hear that," Deidara finally said, his voice as cool and unemotional as the Uchiha's. He tilted his head down towards hers; Sakura couldn't move away because of his grip. His hair brushed against the side of her face as he whispered in her ear, "It means you've left _me_ with no choice."

Trembling, Sakura closed her eyes, trying to mentally prepare herself. The teeth in his hand bit down, just a little, enough for the knowledge that _he could tear her throat out_ to permeate her mind. That thought produced another shudder. As if it took an effort Deidara carefully removed his fingers, his thumb, then finally pulled the palm with those gripping teeth away from her neck.

Because her eyes were closed Sakura couldn't see the bleak expression in his, which was just as well because she wasn't in the mood to be moved by any torment _he_ might be experiencing. What she heard was the soft step of his sandals as he walked around her, and the much-hated creak of the door as it closed behind him.

* * *

From what Deidara found out later, lunch started out awkward and went downhill from there.

He probably should have told his fellow Akatsuki ahead of time that the two of them had had the _mother_ of all arguments, something more than the usual blowing-off-steam squabbling that happened when two people were forced into close contact with each other for days on end. But he was pacing the halls as he tried to walk off his anger over the confrontation and didn't have a clue about the possible fall-out until he returned to their rooms and found the door ajar, as it usually was when Sakura was in the kitchen eating lunch.

Kisame sometimes would come and get them, especially when he was the one cooking. He didn't like food he prepared sitting around getting cold.

 _This is bad._ Deidara ran for the kitchen, but he could tell before he got there that it was _worse_ than bad.

Sakura was _shouting_. She hadn't done any yelling during her argument with him, which was a shame because he could _handle_ screaming arguments, but the Uchiha was probably in there and _he didn't like it when someone raised their voice to him_.

 _Gods, this is bad!_

Deidara had to grab the doorframe to stop his momentum from taking him beyond the room. The tableau he saw in the kitchen froze his blood.

Sakura had her hands planted on the table in a familiar confrontational manner, the Uchiha was sitting across from her wearing his usual blank expression, and Kisame was standing at the stove, jaw agape and astonishment writ huge across his face. Whatever he was supposed to be tending on the stove had long since turned into charcoal. There was a thin layer of smoke throughout the room. No one seemed to notice or care.

Ironic if, after everything the Akatsuki had been through, their strongest members died of smoke inhalation.

" _What did you do to her?"_ snarled Kisame as soon as he saw Deidara.

Deidara crossed his arms and leaned in the doorway, face as expressionless as he could make it. "Reminded her that sometimes stuff happens."

Wrong thing to say _again._

" _Stuff?!_ What is wrong with you people?! It's a baby, alright, a baby, a child, a person, not a _thing,_ not a vessel!"

The Uchiha regarded her without a hint of interest or anger or, really, any emotion at all. "It's best if you do not think of it as a child," he said. "It's a tool. Nothing more."

"What if this 'tool' doesn't meet your expectations? Are you planning on killing it, too?!"

Kisame sucked in a harsh breath, a noise so unusual coming from him that Deidara found himself glancing towards the water specialist instead of Itachi or Sakura.

But then the Uchiha rose to his feet, and although his expression didn't change in the least he released the usual check on his chakra, allowing it to stretch out to its full depth and force. Deidara tensed, fingers digging into his pouch and clenching into the clay there, teeth chewing it hard. Kisame _moved_ in a flash, robes billowing and settling around him as he materialized between the Uchiha and the girl.

He was facing Itachi, Sakura blocked from view behind him. "Enough, you two," he said sharply.

Sakura would not be still, and what spilled out of her was old, old hurts combined with the very real fear of what they meant to do to her child ( _It would be your baby, too_ she'd said, but Deidara still hadn't wrapped his mind around that concept).

"Why are you like this? Haven't you put your family through enough? Haven't you put Sasuke through enough?!"

"It's still about Sasuke for you, then?" asked the Uchiha mildly.

"I'll never forgive you for what you did to him! Never!"

"Is that all?"

Sakura tried to lunge around Kisame. Sighing, Kisame grabbed her by the back of the shirt and lifted her off the ground. _"Enough_ , I said. Little girl, you are going back to your room."

"I'll take her back—" Deidara started, but Kisame gave him a look so venomous the words choked in his throat.

" _You_ ," snarled the big man, "will get out of the doorway. Now."

Holding his hands in front of him, Deidara stepped inside the kitchen, out of Kisame's way.

"Sakura." When the Uchiha spoke, Kisame made the mistake of pausing. He should have kept walking. "There is more here at stake than you know."

"I am not giving any of you a 'vessel'!"

"Strictly speaking, your cooperation is not required."

"Oi, that's enough out of you, too," snapped Kisame.

" _I hate this!"_ Sakura screamed. _"I hate you!"_ And she broke into great wrenching sobs.

Grimacing, Kisame tried to gather Sakura up in a comfortable lift but she snarled and struggled and his own temper flared. "That's _it_. No threats," to Itachi, "no name calling," to Sakura, " _got it_? I'm taking her to her room now," he added to his partner as he flung the still-sobbing Sakura unceremoniously over one shoulder. "Itachi, _calm down._ " He marched out of the room. The sound of her sobs dissipated but for a few stray echoes bouncing off the stone walls.

Deidara shot a glance at the Uchiha, but could not find any indication that the Uchiha was any more emotional than normal. Of course, Itachi's "normal" aura stated things like "cold-blooded" and "ruthless" and "would kill someone for snoring too loud" (and Sakura, Deidara happened to know, snored like a _bear_ ), so that wasn't anything to be comforted by.

When it appeared that the Uchiha was not going to immediately take out his ire (if 'ire' it was) on the nearest warm body (namely, _his_ ), Deidara decided to mention something _else_ that bugged him about the conversation. "Um, she said 'Sasuke'?"

"Yes."

"Your brother, Sasuke, eh?"

"Yes."

"What _about_ Sasuke? I thought they were just training partners when they were kids, eh?"

"You'll have to ask Sakura that. What _did_ you do to her?"

" _Nothing_ , okay? She just snapped all on her own."

"Ah. That happens."

And just like that the Uchiha reeled in his chakra, and the atmosphere in the room became more breathable.

Deidara only then realized that he had released his own checks, as had Kisame, which explained why he instinctively got out of the water specialist's way rather than argue with him. Kisame at full strength was overwhelming. Even jounin could faint dead away in his presence from the sheer pressure of his chakra. The repression of their energy was something the Akatsuki members did automatically when not in battle, because they were powerful individuals forced together in a confined space and all that chakra floating around was acutely uncomfortable. It was a matter of professional courtesy.

Sighing, Deidara closed his eyes and consciously restrained himself. When he opened them, Itachi was looking at him, red-hued gaze unreadable.

"You never say her name," noted the Uchiha.

And Deidara actually asked in bewilderment, "Whose name?" before realizing he must mean _her_ because she was the only female at the compound. He grimaced and turned his head away. "I said her name once." _Because I was trying to turn her into an object, the way they teach the squeamish ones at the ninja academy. It didn't work._ He'd said it, but saying it under those circumstances _hurt_ , and he had to leave the room because he was afraid of _how_ much it hurt.

"I need air," Deidara muttered to no one in particular, and left.

After a moment, the Uchiha turned off the stove. He sat back down at the table and finished his tea as if nothing had happened at all.

* * *

Kisame kicked the door fully open and shoved Sakura off his shoulder, but anything he might have said was stifled because she turned on the nearest object, which happened to be the sharp-edged scroll chest behind the door, and slammed her fist into it as hard as she could. Immediately she yelped and cradled her hand to her chest.

"Don't hurt yourself," said Kisame sharply. "You break a bone, you'll have to live with it. No one here has any healing jutsu beyond the basics."

Sakura sank down to the floor. She was as angry as she had ever been in her entire life, furious that her anger manifested in _tears_ , yet unable to stop the flow. "This is rape, Kisame. I don't care how civilized anyone wants to be about it, it's rape. Even if Deidara and I— Forcing me to have a baby is a violation."

There was a rustle of cloth, then the weight of his hand against her back, stroking in what was probably meant to be a comforting way. "Has Deidara hurt you?"

Sakura shook her head. "He's been – he is – no. No, he hasn't."

" _Are_ you pregnant?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

After that he seemed at a loss for words. Instead he just gently ran his big hand across her shoulders, and Sakura put her head between her knees as she choked back sobs. After a while she said, "I know you're trying to help, but I really don't want to be touched right now."

There was a pause before Kisame gave her shoulder a couple of quick pats and stood up.

"I have to get my head together, that's all. I'll be fine in a while."

"Right," said Kisame, drawling the word out so slowly it seemed to have more than one syllable. "See you at training tomorrow, then."

Sakura nodded without raising her head. After a moment she heard the door close behind him.

* * *

The ocean _was_ nearby but they had carefully kept her from it because the cliffs of the north shoreline were distinctive and she would have discerned her location if she ever saw them.

Deidara wasn't especially fond of oceans, but he was originally from Earth Country's hidden village and he did have an affinity for rock and stone. The cliffs were a comfort to him. So he leaned against a lone, scraggly pine tree that fought for survival away from the other pines of the nearby forest, and tried to sort through a complex maze of feelings.

Deidara remembered Sasuke.

Hell, he'd nearly _killed_ himself trying off Sasuke a couple years back. But Tobi tackled him before he could release the suicidal C5 technique, hissed " _You're too valuable_ " in his ear, and before Deidara could protest this censorship of his artistic expression his partner had applied Shunshin no Jutsu a few dozen times, taking them both literally miles away from the battlefield.

He almost blew himself up anyway out of sheer pique, but Tobi sat on his chest until other members of the Akatsuki arrived to restrain him, by which time Deidara was less inclined to do anything self-destructive. The moment that it would have been _art_ had passed.

It was an unusually lucid moment from the normally babbling Tobi, apparently brought on by the strain of his own impending death. He'd not spoken a coherent sentence since, which since he'd never spoken a coherent sentence _before_ just meant things were back to normal.

Of all the problems facing him "Sasuke" had to be _the_ most minor one right now, but Deidara still wished the 'offing' attempt had been successful. Although that also meant that he wouldn't be around to help _her_ , and she needed help right now.

…Man, she messed up his mind something awful.

Deidara didn't care. He rather liked the extra bit of chaos their relationship brought into his life since it forced him to expand his thoughts on what constituted artistic ability, and a true artist needed that to grow.

"Deidara."

Deidara sighed. "Go away, Kisame, okay?"

The big male ignored him. "Sakura says you didn't hurt her. I'm choosing to believe that."

"How nice of you."

"Better go make up with her."

Deidara snorted. "Or what?"

"Or," said Kisame with cool deliberation, "I'm declaring your part in the mission a failure and taking her away from you." Snarling in disbelief Deidara whipped his head towards the other male. Kisame was watching him with narrowed eyes and a harsh, unamused slash across his face in place of the usual smirk. "Make sure she's in a better mood tomorrow."

"It's not me." _It's the baby_ , Deidara thought but he didn't say it out loud because Kisame would just go all _Itachi_ on him and tell him it was not a baby but a _vessel_. "It's the situation, okay?"

"Yeah, well, not a lot of choice about that part."

 _That again._

 _Dramatic irony bites sometimes._

Deidara tilted his head back, staring through the thin pine needles to the pale blue sky above. "Yeah, I'll talk to her."

* * *

At some point she removed herself from the floor and crawled into bed.

Because sitting curled up on the stone floor bemoaning her fate was just so cliché, and Sakura was sick of living in a cliché.

So she curled up under the covers to bemoan her fate, and told herself that was _totally_ different.

It was more comfortable, at least.

At least, it was until her dry sobs turned into hiccups.

 _Involuntary contraction of the diaphragm,_ Sakura thought automatically. Of course, she couldn't do the hand seals that would freeze that muscle in place for the tiny second it would take to interrupt the signals causing the contractions and trying to stimulate the pressure points to do that without chakra was dangerous because the diaphragm was involved with breathing. Too much pressure in the wrong place could mean suffocation.

Yes, there was a sure-fire cure for the hiccups, although for someone who couldn't use chakra the cure would likely prove fatal.

Supposedly a sudden fright could be used to cure the hiccups for those lacking chakra, but Sakura still harbored more anger than anything else so she wasn't as frightened as she should have been when the outer door creaked.

There were sounds Sakura had become accustomed to over the past several months that told her it was Deidara and not one of the other males who entered her rooms. He usually slung his cloak over one of the chairs at night; when he was ready for bed he left his sandals by the opening to her bedroom; the dragging noise that accompanied the unfolding of his futon would be next…

…except it wasn't. Sakura didn't hear so much as _feel_ the mattress give under his weight. There was the barest wisp of sensation as his fingertips lightly stroked behind her ear before running into her hair, the movement repeated as if he were petting her.

He was touching her.

 _He was touching her._

 _Oh,_ hell _, no, I am not falling for the hurt/comfort thing! No, no, no, no!_

"Don't even _think_ it!" Sakura snarled, or tried to between the hiccups.

"Think what?" inquired Deidara. "I'm not even under the covers. You're the one with the dirty mind, eh?"

…That was surprisingly hard to argue with.

There was another shift of the mattress as Deidara swung his legs up, the impression of warmth as he tucked his body behind hers _(hadn't she threatened him with death should he ever try the 'spooning' maneuver?)._ One arm slid under her neck, palm (teeth mercifully closed) covering her shoulder; the other looped over her waist. He pressed his nose against the nape of her neck.

Sakura was too emotionally wrung out to panic or react or even care much, but Deidara made no other moves and kept his hands strictly on areas of her body that were relatively neutral territory. Eventually the hiccups subsided on their own, although her labored breaths still had a catch to them. Shortly after that Sakura fell into not sleep so much as a dull unconsciousness.

* * *

Kisame found the Uchiha in his rooms, sitting in the corner, in the dark, staring at nothing.

He did that sometimes.

Sighing, the big male leaned a shoulder against the wall. "I know all about the whole captive/captor thing," said Kisame conversationally. "Watch the exposure time, be careful what you say, don't get attached, don't identify with, all that crap. The irritating thing is, even though I _know_ what's happening, I can't seem to _stop_ it from happening."

The Uchiha inclined his head.

"We have to contact HQ and see about getting a mission or two. They don't have to be long ones, and we can stay here between them. We're getting too caught up in the drama. We need a break."

The Uchiha inclined his head once again.

* * *

She was asleep.

Not a comfortable sleep. Although she wasn't tossing and turning there was still the occasional hitch in her breathing, as well as involuntary twitches that might have become tossing if Deidara didn't have her anchored in place with the arm around her waist.

For hours Deidara had been just _reacting_ , but with her settled and the other two males not present, he could finally _think_ about the situation.

He understood the need for a new jinchuuriki, he had heard Itachi give the whole "sacrifices must be made" speech, he even _agreed_ with it. And although Deidara was in the Akatsuki because he was forced into it, for the others it was different. The elimination of the "ownership" of bloodline limits by this or that particular shinobi village was a primary motivating force for several of the Akatsuki.

It was as the Uchiha said; none of them cared to be treated as meat.

Was he seriously going to let a child of his be treated that way?

Deidara was from a clan with a bloodline limit, a powerful one. Children from such clans were raised from an early age with the responsibility to perpetuate those limits beaten into them (sometimes literally).

Most remained loyal.

Some rebelled. Deidara fit that mold, certainly. He was an oddity in a clan of espionage specialists, someone who demanded attention for his skill with clay amidst people who wore gloves and never showed their techniques to outsiders. Deidara forgot how many times his mother said to him, "Do not use your chakra to blow up your reconnaissance figurines"—tch. What was the _point_ of having the ability to blow things up if it went unused? Of course, his mother wouldn't have made the same mistake _he_ did in Sand, that of being discovered because his clay bird was the wrong species for that part of the world. Art wasn't in the details; it was in the explosive exposition.

Some cracked. He thought that was what happened to the Uchiha. Really, one doesn't kill one's own entire clan unless something _gives_ , y'know? But asking each other about the past was perhaps _the_ biggest taboo in the Akatsuki, so Deidara would never really know what happened with the Uchiha. Not that he cared. He just like to think of that too-calm automaton _having_ a cracking point.

He had never considered even the concept of 'children' before.

He'd never had to. Deidara had deserted his home country at a young age, too young to know what breeding regulations were in place for his clan. And like Master Sasori he was an artist. Having babies was for lesser beings who couldn't produce art. Children were the best they could do. Admittedly, Master Sasori's artistic excesses led him down a path where fathering children was an impossibility, but Deidara had always agreed with that part of his late master's philosophy. Art was rare, children were common, sex was meaningless in the greater context. Pour all energy into the art, every drop of it, because any wasted energy represented art that hadn't reached fulfillment, and unfulfilled art was a crime of the highest order.

Deidara was rethinking his artistic philosophy. Just a bit.

Okay, maybe a lot.

Maybe even a _whole_ lot.

Sex was occupying his mind more than it ever had, not only because of his current "mission," but because _she_ was part of the current mission.

Deidara hadn't realized it before the Uchiha pointed it out, but when he thought 'she' in his own mind there was no need for a name. He only meant one person.

She was—

 _...maddening beautiful talented strong-willed dangerous unpredictable..._

 _Cute_ was what he finally decided on, even though _cute_ was a word no true artist would use and Deidara's lip curled derisively even as he applied it. There was a depth of meaning in the _other_ words, however, that frightened him, forcing him to cheapen the depth of her artistic existence.

Her passion about the purpose of children appealed to his artistic sensibilities. But her grim silence after the blow-up with the Uchiha did not appeal to him on any level.

If her passion marked her as an artist of sorts, then this place and the situation she had been forced into was stifling her artistic expression.

The stifling of artistic expression was not something he could tolerate.

Nor could he tolerate a child of _his_ being treated like meat.

 _Choice_ , she said. It all came down to _choice_.

He was staring right at a choice he didn't like, one he would not have even considered a possibility before _this_ happened.

One he was going to make anyway.

 _I am so dead,_ Deidara thought grimly. But when he pressed his forehead against the nape of her neck and felt the faint tickle of her hair against his face, he knew that, in the need for greater artistic expression, mere death was not all that important.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: Vessel, Part 9**

Title: Vessel, Part 9  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: R or Mature, depending on the archive  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 9**

Consciousness came to Sakura as a series of sensations, most of which she didn't care to experience. Her lids felt as if they were both glued together and stuck to her eyes. She spent a few minutes debating what she wanted to do about that before deciding she should really work first on the dull throb between her ears. No sooner did she switch her attention to the throbbing, however, when she became aware that her right hand hurt, and hurt something fierce. But she couldn't keep her mind on that because she was too warm, and her pillow kept shifting, and a shifting pillow was just distracting.

 _Wait a minute…_

Sakura opened one eye to check, and clenched it closed again with a muffled groan. Yes, it was exactly what she was afraid it was.

She wasn't sure which number cliché this was when it came to "situational experiences that happen whilst sharing a bed," but it had to be in the top five.

"You going to yell?" asked a weary voice just above her "pillow."

Raising her face from Deidara's chest, Sakura shook her head. "All yelled out."

She could see the corner of his wide mouth quirk. "Somehow I doubt that, eh."

Sighing, Sakura sat up, or started to. As it happened he was still on top of the covers and she was still (mostly) under them, so the best she could do was lever up on an elbow before the bedclothes trapped her in place.

Which left her practically nose-to-nose with Deidara.

 _Well, it would be hard for him_ not _to kiss me like this…_

Not as hard as she thought, apparently. "You're tangled up, try rolling the other way," suggested Deidara helpfully. Sakura could feel his breath on her face in little puffs as he spoke. She shifted a little bit, he moved his hands from her back and tugged at the bedspread, and when she tried to maneuver again Sakura could sit up. She crossed her legs and stared down at her bed partner, uncertain about what was going to happen next.

Deidara stretched his arms out, wincing, flexing his fingers. _He looks tired,_ she thought, although Sakura was sure she looked worse. Her eyes felt scratchy from crying, and no doubt she had huge dark circles under her eyes. He sat up as well, leaning against the headboard as he faced her, his expression unusually somber. "Need the bathroom?"

Well, _yes_ , although not badly. Sakura was very dehydrated from her crying. All she wanted to do was wash her face, and she could wait for that. "No, I'm fine, go ahead."

Deidara gave her a questioning look, although he didn't argue. Swinging his legs around, he scooted past her without touching her, and stood up by the bed. There was heavy tension in the set of his shoulders. He started to drag one hand through his hair, but winced as it caught a snarl. Not looking at her, he went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Soon after the shower was turned on.

Sakura locked her arms by her side and leaned back slightly. Her head was fuzzy from the turmoil of the day before, and her thoughts were too broken to be examined very closely. The façade of civility had been shattered, and she wasn't sure it could be repaired.

She wasn't even sure it should be repaired. She was, after all, tired of pretending.

Instead of thinking Sakura listened to the water running. It suited her odd trance-like mood.

There was no real privacy in the bathroom. It had a door, for which she was grateful, but no locks. The shower (and it was only a shower; a tub would be all-too-easy to drown in) didn't have any covering at all. The faucet was set well back so the entire room wouldn't get drenched, but a shower curtain rod or a glass door was out of the question in a place that been suicide-proofed.

It was as if it had been designed for the walking-in-on-the-other-person-while-bathing cliché. Maybe it had, although Deidara had been scrupulous in respecting her privacy and Sakura returned the favor.

Well, what was one more cliché between friends? Sakura got off the bed and, as if in a dream, went to the door and opened it.

Deidara was in the shower, not bathing so much as letting the water run over him. One hand braced against the wall as his head tilted forward. When Sakura opened the door he raised his face and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened.

Stepping behind him, not caring that she was getting soaked, Sakura leaned her head forward until it rested on the wet hair streaming between his shoulder blades. She slipped her hands around his waist, not too low for obvious reasons, not too high either since he seemed to have issues about his chest. Scar? Old ANBU tattoo from his homeland? It would have to be bad to be more unsightly than the barbed slashes circumnavigating his upper arms. She didn't care about a few marks on his skin, but she was already invading his privacy and didn't want to intrude further.

"Hey," he finally said, tone over-casual.

Sakura 'hmmm'd' noncommittally.

"You okay?"

"I don't know what sort of schedule you're on but – when it's time, get me drunk, very, very drunk, so I won't remember anything."

Deidara snorted and collapsed forward as his bracing arm folded at the elbow, resting his head against his forearm. "Yeah, _that's_ flattering."

Sakura followed, pressing against his back more firmly, eyes clenched closed. "I don't want the sharingan used on me," she said very quietly.

She felt him trying to turn, and she loosened her embrace. His arms looped across her back as he pulled her close. Hands shifting to his chest, Sakura pressed the side of her face against his collarbone as his chin come to rest on top of her head. Her hands were flat against him. Under one palm was a raised area, a repeating pattern she wanted to trace but didn't. It felt like stitches, as if he had been poorly patched up after a very bad injury. _Scarred, then. Like I haven't seen that and more._ But she didn't open her eyes, and when his hands started to move in an automatic soothing pattern across her back, she decided she didn't care. She felt yielding and resigned and she resented the manipulation of her emotions although Deidara himself she didn't mind too much. "Just get it over with."

Sakura meant _now_. Evidently Deidara didn't take it that way. "Not much longer, okay?" he murmured, both his touch and his words curiously devoid of anything sexual. He was naked, her water-slicked clothes clung to her skin so she might as well be naked, but the embrace was comforting rather than arousing.

After allowing herself to be held by him for a while, Sakura managed a weak chuckle. "So, you're a nice guy after all. Who knew."

"Shut up," Deidara grumbled, annoyed.

* * *

Getting out of the shower wasn't nearly as awkward as it could have been. He shut the water off, grabbed a few towels, and annoyed her by rubbing her pink head with one of them. She flounced out with the towel over her face saying she could dry her own hair, thankyouverymuch, although since _someone_ never shared his hair dryer it would take a while. She sounded like her usual self, not the woman with the dead eyes he woke up with that morning. Breathing a sigh of relief Deidara turned the water back on long enough to rinse the shampoo out of his hair, then tied it up damp because he didn't want to provoke her by using the hair dryer. He hadn't known it before, but evidently the device was a sore point with her.

Fortunately she never opened her eyes while she was in the shower so she didn't see the stitches or the seal on his chest. He really didn't want to have to explain _that_ to her right now. She'd been through enough the last twenty-four hours.

Deidara had a hand to the door, ready to go out, when all the ramifications of what had just happened hit him.

He could have kissed her this morning.

Hell, he could have _more_ than kissed her this morning. Admittedly he didn't know much about women, but when one rubbed up against you in the shower and suggested getting "it" over with, it didn't take a lot (or _any)_ experience to get the drift.

But she would have thought it was about 'the vessel', and it wasn't. It wasn't at all.

Just as well. There was nothing arousing about a defeated, passive Sakura. The woman who strode out of here growling over his hair dryer of all things … eh, he'd better not think about _her_ too much or he'd have to take another shower. A very _cold_ one.

Shame there wasn't such a thing as contraceptive jutsu. He could perform it on her, she'd be protected from any vessel-related side effects, and they could, well, _do it._

Deidara rolled his eyes. Yeah, as if a convenient jutsu like _that_ could ever exist in real life.

… Damn, he was going to die a virgin.

Which had never bothered him before, actually, so it was annoying that it bothered him now.

She wasn't in the bedroom, so Deidara went outside to find her sitting at the table. She had taken his seat (she did that when he didn't get to it first), the one that had the view of the door. Dammit, how was supposed to take care of her with his back to the room's main security weakness? He grabbed the other chair and moved it to the end of the table so he was sitting at her left side instead of across from her.

For once she wasn't reading any of the medical texts. A faint wince across her features, she had her right hand flattened on the table top as she carefully rubbed along its back with the fingertips of her other hand.

"What are you doing?"

"Stimulating blood flow."

Deidara winced himself when he looked down at her hand. Several knuckles were split, the flesh between knuckles swollen and discolored. It looked excruciating. "What the hell happened?"

"I got mad and hit something."

"Kisame?"

That made her chuckle. "No. He has tough skin, it does make my fists sting if I ever connect during sparring, but I'd have to punch right through him without using chakra to do this kind of damage to myself. Somehow I doubt he would stand there and let me."

She didn't resist when Deidara reached for her injured hand. Frowning he tilted it back and forth, studying the damage. Nothing appeared broken. He wasn't any good at closing up surface wounds but he could start them on the road to healing, so he might be able to help with the abrasions across her knuckles. Most of it was soft tissue damage, however, and he was sure he'd do more harm than good trying to fix anything under the skin. Deidara glanced at her face. "Can I?"

She lifted one shoulder, which he took as assent. Carefully he placed her hand between both of his and concentrated on the surface of her skin under his palm before trying to brush chakra gently across it to promote healing.

"Deidara."

"Hmmm?" This wasn't his specialty; talking was a bad idea right now.

"No tongues."

Deidara looked at her, blinked, then burst out laughing. "Funny," he scolded, letting go of her. "See if I ever try healing you again." He stood up, shaking his head. "Fine, I'll see what I can find, okay?"

* * *

He sent some of the support ninjas scrambling for bandages, but no one seemed to have anything antiseptic to put on her hand. Sighing, Deidara made his way to the kitchen. He didn't really want to deal with the other two Akatsuki this morning, but avoiding them was pointless.

The Uchiha was at the table drinking tea, positioned exactly where he had been last time Deidara saw him. Deidara wondered if Itachi had moved at all since that screaming argument the day before. Kisame was in the back near the refrigerator, rummaging through the shelves. He glanced over his shoulder, and nodded at Deidara. "How is she this morning?"

Deidara's mouth twitched slightly because the first thing he thought was 'wet' as an image of her in the shower flashed through his mind. "Quiet," he said instead.

Kisame eyed the Uchiha and muttered, "Lot of that going around …"

 _How can you possibly tell?_ wondered Deidara. He skirted the table and stood near Kisame, opening up a cabinet. "Do we have any salve? She's messed up one of her hands."

"Oi, she punched the scroll case that hard? I've got something that might help. I'll go check my gear."

From behind them came a dull, flat sound. Kisame and Deidara both whirled around, at first not seeing what had made the unexpected noise. The Uchiha held the same posture he had when Deidara walked into the room, teacup between his hands, but now in the center of the table was a small ceramic jar.

Kisame smirked. "Or we could ask Itachi for his hidden medical stash."

Walking back to the table, Deidara thought about saying 'thank you' but that would involve being polite to the Uchiha and even on good days he _hated_ the Uchiha. He settled for giving a curt nod of acknowledgement as he picked the jar up.

Itachi gazed at him steadily over the rim of his cup, expressionless as ever. "Is she going to be able to train?"

"Dunno. I'll ice up her hand and see if that helps, okay?"

"Does Sakura need anything? I'm going to be contacting the Leader soon." Deidara directed a narrow-eyed stare at Kisame. "Nothing to do with you two, don't flatter yourself. Itachi and I need to check on something, that's all."

 _All she needs is out of here._ "Naw, I think she's good."

Kisame helped Deidara pack the ice. The younger man snagged a box of cereal and grabbed a milk carton on his way out, and headed back to Sakura.

* * *

The swelling had stretched the skin across her knuckles uncomfortably tight. Sakura was thankful that Deidara thought of ice. It was infuriating to have to use normal techniques for healing when a few minutes of concentration could have completely banished the swelling and mended the nicks and breaks in her skin. Living without chakra was hard.

Deidara was better at tending wounds than she thought he would be, but then, the two-man teams utilized by the Akatsuki didn't include medics so no doubt he had learned from experience. He packed ice into a towel and carefully folded it around her hand, telling her sternly not to move for the next fifteen minutes. He offered to spoon feed her breakfast. That seemed curiously intimate to Sakura so she insisted on feeding herself awkwardly with her left hand. She tried to get him to rifle the scroll cabinet for some simple healing seals she thought he might be able to duplicate, but he grinned and refused. "Wouldn't want to put you out of a job."

Sakura thought Deidara's continued refusal to handle the medical texts was downright phobic. "I'll bet you make sloppy seals," she retorted.

"Yeah, I do," he admitted easily. "I'm a sculptor, I don't do other media. You make me do seals, I might accidentally blow some fingers off, eh?"

"As long as they were **yours**."

Deidara grinned again, but he also unthinkingly rubbed two fingers against his upper arm, along the rough scar Sakura knew lay under his cloak. He had lost both arms during the Suna excursion that resulted in Sasori's death, although obviously someone in the Akatsuki knew reattachment techniques. Joking about missing bodily appendages with him was probably not a good idea.

He carefully unpacked her hand. Both were pleased with the results; Deidara was convinced that the swelling had reduced, and Sakura could flex her fingers with less pain. Deidara pulled out a jar and opened it, releasing a faint whiff of ginger. He held out his hand palm up ("no tongue, promise, okay?") and Sakura placed hers on top. He carefully smoothed the ointment across her fingers and piled it thickly on top of her battered knuckles. When he was done he didn't release her. Instead, he rested his hand on the table, and she rested her hand on top of his. They were quiet for a while.

"Better?" Deidara finally asked.

"Yes. It has ginger as a base, smell it? That's a good anti-inflammatory when swallowed. I've never used it in cream form, though."

"It's from the Uchiha," Deidara said, flicking a glance at her and then away, as if not sure how she would respond to that.

Sakura sighed. That was a meeting that would only get more awkward the longer she put it off. "I want to see Itachi."

His concerned gaze pulled back to her face. "Are you sure?"

"Maybe 'want' is the wrong word. I _need_ to see Itachi."

"Are you going to yell at him some more?"

Sakura smiled wryly. "I'm not sure. I know what I want to say, but I don't know if I can be disciplined enough to say it."

Her companion obviously didn't want her anywhere near Itachi if there was a chance an argument might break out. "Watch your temper, okay?" Deidara warned. "If he loses it and gets you in a genjutsu, Kisame and I together might not be able to pull you out of it."

Ironically her perfect chakra control combined with her own skill at genjutsu meant that Sakura was one of the few shinobi alive who could reliably pull _herself_ out of a sharingan-induced hallucination without aid. That was one of the reasons she felt so vulnerable around Itachi; it would be a nightmare to be trapped by him and intellectually know _how_ to break away without being able to implement her skills to do so.

Of course Itachi could also simply skip the torture to render her unconscious with the sharingan, but Sakura remembered what he did to Kakashi and Naruto and even to his own brother Sasuke when the latter was just a child. She couldn't believe the Uchiha would go any easier on her.

"I'll take that chance," was what she told Deidara.

* * *

Deidara refused to take her to Itachi right away, although she wanted to go immediately. Her mood was still odd, a combination of pensiveness and forced humor. As much as he adored her, he couldn't trust her at the moment. Deidara was sure another confrontation with the Uchiha would turn violent if either of their tempers snapped. There wasn't much he could do for her protection in the underground base. At least outdoors in the training area Deidara could grab her, toss her onto a clay bird and get her out of the sharingan's range.

It was a shame they couldn't just keep going, but although Deidara had no plan of action, per se, he knew that he needed to make sure the Uchiha and Kisame weren't immediately on their tails. No, all he would do was keep her out of range until the Uchiha calmed down. As powerful as the Uchiha was he couldn't fly, and setting up any long-range jutsu would take time. Hopefully Kisame would interfere if Itachi broke out the mangekyo sharingan, which he would need for an effective distance attack. Out in the open Deidara had a major advantage, one he was not going to give up just because she was in a hurry.

So he wouldn't allow her to lunch with the others as she habitually did, and refused to bring the Uchiha to her in their rooms as she demanded (that, Deidara was sure, would only bring disaster), firmly insisting that she would have to wait until the training session in the afternoon to speak to either Itachi or Kisame.

Deidara discovered that he was right about one thing; she was _definitely_ not all yelled out.

After lunch Deidara applied more salve to her hand and carefully re-bandaged her fingers. "No sparring," he told her sternly. "I'll make some dummies for you, okay, but just use kicks. Don't hit anything."

She rolled her eyes and muttered, "Yes, _doctor_ ," under her breath.

Looking at her annoyed expression as he tied off the bandage, Deidara unexpectedly thought, _Man, she's cute, huh._

…That very non-artistic word again.

Mentally he rephrased the thought as _Man, I have it bad, huh?_

"What's so funny?" she demanded, regarding him suspiciously.

"Nothing, okay?" he insisted, but Deidara could hardly get the words out because his chuckling was threatening to become full-blown laughter. She gave him another irritated look, grumbled that compared to him _Itachi_ was normal, and pulled her hand away as she got to her feet.

He couldn't stop giving her instructions as they made their way outside; stay next to him, _don't provoke Itachi, okay,_ don't struggle if he grabbed her and ran, _don't provoke Itachi, okay,_ duck behind Kisame if she had to because Kisame's big-ass sword was effective in draining _anyone's_ chakra—

"'Don't provoke Itachi, okay'?" she finished with him as they reached the clearing. "I know, I _know_. I'll say what I have to say; I can't control how he's going to react."

"…You're going to provoke him, aren't you?"

She huffed and shook her head, but she didn't deny it. Sighing, Deidara looked up, making sure the area was clear of any tree limbs or other hindrances that might impede a quick take-off.

The two men were training together, sword against sword. For all that his most powerful techniques were water-based, Kisame's style was anything but fluid. His sword technique relied on raw power, which showed in the multiple furrows that decorated the nearby ground. The Uchiha's far more compact weapon was tiny in comparison, made for fast dehabilitating slices.

They both pulled up at the same time and turned to face the newcomers. Kisame grinned and waved, resting his sword on his shoulder. The Uchiha stood blank-faced, naked blade in hand, no indication aside from the direction of his gaze that he noticed the other two.

Eyeing the sword, Deidara was ready to skip the whole talking-to-Itachi bit and go right to the flying-like-a-bat-of-hell part of the proceedings. She was made of sterner stuff. She walked up until she was way too close to the Uchiha for Deidara's comfort before addressing him. "I will not apologize. I hate this situation, and I will never forgive what you put Sasuke through."

Deidara rolled his eyes. _Oh, yeah, way to_ not _provoke him, huh._ The Uchiha gazed at her without expression which, while it was the same way he gazed at everyone, put Deidara's teeth on edge. His fingers closed around the little clay bird he had already made; meanwhile, the teeth on his other hand were busy chewing on clay, preparing to spit out some low-level smoke bombs.

"However, there is one thing I should not have said. I do not hate _you_." She folded her hands in front of herself and bowed.

The Uchiha continued to look at her without expression, but somehow the tension eased. Behind him, Kisame lowered his sword; Deidara hadn't even realized the big male had moved it from his shoulder and was holding it in a ready position.

Then she smiled and held up her bandaged hand. "And thank you for the salve. It's wonderful. Where did you get it?"

"Uchiha recipe," replied Itachi. He tilted his head slightly, unreadable gaze focused on her. "You'll have to ask Sasuke for it."

Her smile faded a bit, although she nodded. Turning to Deidara, she said, "You promised me some practice dummies?"

"Yeah, yeah, coming up." He grabbed her by the elbow and practically dragged her to the other side of the clearing, relieved it had gone so well, annoyed that the Uchiha had brought up that _other guy's_ name _again_.

Grinning, "Low blow," Kisame muttered to the Uchiha before following the two. "You're not going to hit anything, are you?" he asked Sakura.

"No, geez, just kicks!"

Deidara performed seals that set up three dummies for her, all of them bearing a striking resemblance to the Uchiha. Although he claimed not to work in anything other than clay, he had become very adept at making the wooden practice aids look like other members of the party. Soon she was engaged in trying to kick the head off the nearest Itachi. Deidara found it was therapeutic just watching her.

Kisame jerked his chin at Deidara. Brow raised in inquiry, Deidara padded over. "Yeah, what?"

"We talked to the Leader," Kisame told him.. "He has a mission for us."

Deidara blinked. "Another mission? Are we taking her with us?"

"Not you, just me and Itachi. You get to stay here."

"You're leaving me? You're leaving me alone with _her?_ "

"That's about the size of it," agreed Kisame. "We won't be gone long, so don't do too many things we wouldn't do. Wouldn't want to have to get a babysitter for you two next time."

There was a whirl of displaced air, and Itachi stood next to them. "Is there a problem?" the Uchiha asked.

"No," said Deidara. "No problems, okay? No problems at all."


	10. Chapter 10

Title: Vessel, Part 10  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 10**

* * *

He had no plan.

He never had a plan.

It just wasn't _him_. Art required spontaneity; planning spoiled art.

Deidara's current partner Tobi didn't mind, he was perfectly happy to go with the flow, but it used to drive Master Sasori crazy. Master Sasori often reprimanded Deidara after missions for not "sticking to the plan" in his even, unemotional voice. Well, actually, it was more like he was scolded for _ruining_ the plan. What could he say? Explosions were flashy. People tended to notice them.

Deidara's own viewpoint was that things always went wrong with plans, especially Master Sasori's since they were so meticulously detailed that there many, _many_ places for mistakes. If there was no plan to begin with, then nothing could go wrong with it, okay?

That didn't mean nothing could go wrong, _period._ Stuff happened. But it was easier to adjust on the fly when there was no plan to salvage.

"Fly," in this case, being the operative word.

Deidara didn't go as far as seeing the other two off (that would have been suspicious), but he checked and doubled-checked their rooms several times after their scheduled departure to make sure they were _really_ gone, that they hadn't forgotten anything and returned for it, that there was no chance in _hell_ they would be able to interfere.

He had no plan.

But he knew what he was going to do.

* * *

Deidara was behaving strangely.

Well, Deidara usually behaved strangely. He was, after all, a rather strange individual.

It said something about _how_ strange he was acting that Sakura noticed it as behavior unusual for him.

Last night he told her that the other two Akatsuki members were going on a mission. "Two-three days, Kisame said." Deidara couldn't sit still while he was talking to her, which was surprising. When he was nervous he molded clay, when he was calm he molded clay, when he was indifferent he molded clay. He never bounced in his chair, didn't have nervous twitches, wasn't one for pacing. Usually.

He was a bit like a kid suddenly released from strict supervision, contemplating mischief without moving to the implementation stage quite yet.

There were a lot of low level explosions, the type that generated a flash and dust but didn't damage anything. He couldn't seem to stop himself. Sakura wondered if he had ever considered any alternative careers. He would be a big hit at children's birthday parties.

Sakura folded her arms and informed him that she was _not_ eating breakfast on that dusty table. She expected him to dust it off using a corner of his Akatsuki robe (he'd done that in the past), but instead he bounded past her, performed the seal that opened the door, and insisted that they eat in the kitchen.

On the way he startled several of the support ninjas out of their wits by setting off explosions near them. That was, Sakura reflected, a _very_ silly thing to do to ninjas. Even mind-controlled ones were inclined to respond as if under attack when something went 'boom' near them. Fortunately Deidara was fast enough to block the initial flurry of kunai or blows that resulted, and once he was recognized all aggression (unless baleful glares counted as 'aggression') ceased. By the time they arrived at the kitchen Sakura couldn't help but notice that the nearby hallways were completely empty of personnel. Evidently avoidance was considered the appropriate action whenever Deidara was in a mood that required explosives to express.

The general _weirdness_ that marked his mood didn't end at the kitchen door. He suddenly swept her up, raced forward and deposited her on the table before Sakura had any idea what was happening. She looked up at him with wide eyes before his arms folded around her, one across her shoulders and one against the small of her back. "I've had fantasies about you and this table," he whispered to her. But his embrace was loose and after that first startled instant she wasn't frightened. Sakura rested her chin on his shoulder as he stroked her hair. He seemed fond of doing that lately.

"So, Deidara," Sakura said slowly, "I can't help but notice – you're sort of, um, _energetic_ today, aren't you?"

"Yeah?" Deidara pulled back enough to grin down at her. "You think?"

He was being _attractive_ again, behaving like what Sakura imagined a boyfriend might do. Fortunately the Akatsuki robe and the scored-out protector of a missing-nin were potent reality checks. "I didn't think you minded the other two so much."

The grin faded to a quiet smile. Deidara's hands shifted, tips running delicately up and down her arms. "It's better with just the two of us, okay?"

Unbidden came the thought that this was a new vessel-related strategy. Sakura raised her eyes again to the slashed forehead protector. This man was not her boyfriend. He wasn't even her friend. Not really. "Is breakfast for two included on this little outing?"

Deidara's mouth took on a rueful twist as he stepped away from her. "Only if you feel like cooking. You know what my cooking's like."

They settled for what they could rummage up, fruit and some rolls. It was the first time Sakura had been allowed to explore the kitchen. There was a large pantry filled with canned and dry goods (and, she noticed in amusement, enough packaged ramen to last even Naruto a good week), no doubt for times when fresh provisions were hard to come by. Given that fresh fruit had been a staple of her diet since she became a prisoner, Sakura was sure there must be a village or a fruit farm nearby. Fruit wasn't something that traveled well.

She also found some instant coffee and insisted on making herself a cup. Deidara turned up his nose when she offered to make him a cup as well. "If you like coffee, I'll see about getting some beans in here, okay? That stuff is awful."

"I just want to smell it more than anything," insisted Sakura as she curved her hands around the mug she found in back of a cabinet. She inhaled deeply. "I haven't even smelled coffee since I left Konoha."

"Didn't take you for the coffee type, eh."

"I'm not, really, but they have it in the hospital staff room back home." Her voice took on a wistful tone. "The shift assignments are posted there, so it's the first place I go when I start work. I didn't even know I missed it until I saw the jar of coffee."

Deidara grinned, that half-mad smirk that took up most of his face. His eyes gleamed. "Don't worry about missing stuff, okay? It won't matter soon."

Sakura eyed him over the rim of the cup. _What did_ that _mean?_ She put the cup down without taking a sip. "Let's go train."

"Not time yet, eh?"

"The others aren't here. We're on our own schedule. And you … you need to blow off some energy."

He laughed, a manic note in it. "Blow **up** some energy, anyway. Let's re-bandage your hand first, okay? Then we can head out."

He jumped out of his chair and bounded out of the room without even looking to see where she was or if she was following. Sakura sat for a moment, jaw agape. Wasn't she supposed to be a prisoner? The only time she had ever been left alone was in her room, and even then she usually had Deidara with her. Slowly she stood up and walked to the hallway. She stared for a moment in the direction she knew led to the exit before touching the necklace at her throat. Her mouth twisted. Even if she used this opportunity to escape, she wouldn't get far. Sighing, Sakura navigated the winding halls back to her room.

The door was standing wide open. Sakura wondered if Deidara expected her to politely lock herself in. She stepped through cautiously. Catching a glimpse of motion in the bedroom, she moved towards the doorway.

Deidara had upended just about every drawer that had her stuff in it onto the bed. "Catch," he said from the other side of the room, and flung something at her. Sakura threw an arm across her body to block; there was a yielding impact and the object fell to her feet.

It was her jounin vest.

Blinking, Sakura picked it up and, after staring at it as if it were a new-fangled device she had never seen before, put it on, largely because she didn't know what else to do with it. She watched for a couple of minutes, too puzzled to say anything, as Deidara rolled up the formal kimono (and its under-kimono) that she had never worn and stuffed it into a duffle bag, the sort that ninjas often used when they were traveling.

"You have a mission, too?" she guessed.

Deidara rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and it requires me to dress up like a geisha." He surveyed what else was on the bed. "So," said he ever-so-casually, "if you had five minutes to get whatever you wanted from here, what would you take?"

Were they relocating? That was a possibility. Sakura swallowed the panicked lump that rose in her throat and tried to only deal with the question at hand, turning towards the big scroll case against the wall.

There was a footfall behind her. Deidara dropped the duffle bag at her feet and shook his head. "Not those things, okay?"

"Those are the most important," protested Sakura. "There's lot of valuable information—"

"Then I hope you have what you need memorized."

"But—"

Sighing, Deidara placed one thumb to his opposite hand. Sakura watched in astonishment as the teeth in his palm bit down hard enough to draw blood. He knelt, hand moving so fast it took her a minute to realize what he was doing.

Deidara was drawing a blood seal on the stone floor.

The hastily-drawn seal was perfect, no sloppy edges, no extra blood drips. Either he didn't give his seal-drawing capabilities enough credit or he out-and-out lied to her about making seals badly. Sakura strongly suspected the latter. There was a flurry of hand-seals, a command word she didn't recognize as he slapped his red palm down in the middle, then—

—then the room was on fire.

Sakura gasped, then gaped. Every visible scroll was glowing red, a seal branded across it shimmering into visible existence. A crimson haze gleamed around the scroll cases as the texts within cast light that escaped through narrow cracks between drawers.

"Like I've been saying for months," Deidara drawled from his kneeling position within the blood circle on the floor, "reading's bad for your health." He stood. When he stepped out of the circle, the light show snuffed out. He gazed at her expectantly, injured thumb tucked against his lips as he absently sucked on it.

Sakura's fingers twisted into the necklace at her throat. The perfectly _normal_ necklace at her throat.

No wonder Deidara always acted like those things burned him. They probably _did_ , since the medical books and scrolls were the instruments used to drain her chakra and _keep_ it drained.

"…brilliant…" Sakura finally murmured, more stunned than admiring or angry. But there was really only one question she wanted to ask as she watched Deidara grab the scrolls from his late master and stuff them in the duffle bag:

 _Why was he showing her this?_


	11. Chapter 11

Title: Vessel, Part 11

Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 11**

* * *

The training clearing.

 _The point of no return._

Dropping the duffle bag in the middle of the clearing, Deidara went through the hand seals that would set up a training dummy. It was generic because he didn't have time to make it look like anything. She gave him a sidelong glance but took a stance in front of it. Before she could make the first kick, Deidara asked, "You use kunai, right?"

Dropping out of the stance, she again looked at him from the corner of her eyes. "Yes."

She had been acting _skittish_ all morning. Between the others being gone and the whole 'vessel' mission, she was probably expecting to be attacked any second.

It hadn't helped that he'd grabbed her and threw her on the kitchen table. She had been relaxed enough at first, but there had been a strange twist across her face when she looked up at him so Deidara let her go and moved away before he frightened her more. He hadn't meant anything by it, he hadn't even thought before doing it, he was just so _energized_ by what was about to happen. He was going to have to rein his excitement in.

Digging into his robe, Deidara pulled out a strap-on holder and a leather bag that made a small metallic noise as he deposited it into her hands. "Here. You can practice your throwing skills, okay? That way you can exercise your hands without punching anything."

She didn't even bother to hide her astonishment. She awkwardly held the bag in one hand, holster dangling by its strap from her injured fingers, before she dropped the holster entirely and dug into the kunai like a child opening a present. She actually _squealed_ when she brought out a fist bristling with sharp edges, tucked expertly between her fingers. Grinning, Deidara picked up the holder and held it out to her again. She surprised him by stretching her arm out to the side, an invitation for him to strap it on for her. _Probably can't do it with her hand still swollen,_ he thought, but it still seemed intimate to bend over her shoulder and manipulate the straps around her upper arm, dangerously close to the side of her breast. He managed not to accidentally grope her; after the table incident, Deidara didn't want to do anything else that might make her nervous.

As she raced several yards away before spinning and launching her first strike at the target, Deidara looked up at the sky, a considering expression across his face. There was a little bit of wind from the south, which would slow them up slightly, but the sky was clear, the air was crisp and although it was colder than he liked, that would change as they headed towards the more temperate climes of the south.

It was a good day for flying.

Deidara shaped the bird methodically as he listened to her grumble over her terrible aim after being out of practice for so long and watched her adjust her stance. He went over the pros and cons in his mind again. _I'm dead_ was something most people would consider a large red X on the "con" side, but death wasn't something that fazed Deidara. Hell, his most powerful technique _required_ his death in order to work. Even if his death wasn't especially artistic, the reason behind it would probably inspire stories and plays and perhaps even a puppet show or two. He smirked. Master Sasori would be proud.

Besides, death was only one possibility. Deidara had already thought of a number of scenarios in which he could claim she out-smarted him or overpowered him, all of which required that he look like an idiot. Unfortunately he _wasn't_ an idiot, which meant the Leader would not likely believe any of them.

He'd deal with that later.

Throwing the bird overhead, he formed a series of quick seals. The clay figurine expanded with a sluicing noise as the material stretched, then hovered just off the ground. Deidara had different designs for different purposes. This one was built for speed, streamlined with swept-back wings. Using it, the border with Fire was only a few hours away.

Staring up at it, Deidara took a deep, steadying breath. "Hey," he called to her, over-casual. "Wanna go for a ride?"

* * *

It had taken some persuading. She was suspicious of his motives.

"Aren't you curious?" he had asked. "This place looks great from the air, okay?"

Then she questioned her ability to stay on the construct.

"You'll have to hang on to me, then," he had smirked. That earned him a slap on the arm, although the physical contact appeared to calm her. She had a bit of a violent streak sometimes.

He had her hop up on the bird's broad back, and sent it in gentle circles around the clearing so she would get used to the sensation as the bird banked. At first she was nervous, scrabbling for handholds on the smooth back, but Deidara kept the motion even and the speed down. Soon she was laughing and holding her arms out to the side as she used her knees to grip.

"Wanna go higher?" he had asked.

Beaming at him, she nodded.

Which brought them to where they were now, the aforementioned point of no return.

Deidara jumped in front of her, standing at his ease on the bird, one hand on a hip as he mentally commanded it to slowly rise straight up. One claw gripped the seemingly-forgotten duffle bag. He glanced over his shoulder. She hadn't noticed anything, too busy squealing like a child on a favorite ride. Deidara grinned. Yeah, no getting around it, she was _cute_. It was the word that fit, okay? Sue him.

Breathing a sigh of relief as they rose into the sky, Deidara felt the tension drain from his shoulders. It was one thing for him to act manic, he did that occasionally, but he had been worried any unusual behavior on her part might give them away if she knew. Now, however, none of the support ninjas could catch them, and since they usually came back from practice in the late afternoon it would be most of the day before anyone thought to look for the two of them.

They cleared the treetops. Sakura swiveled her head around wide-eyed, fingers clenched into the clay as she tried to look everywhere at once. She gasped as she saw the ocean spread out to the north, late morning sun causing the tips of the waves to gleam. Deidara dropped to a seated position. "Let's go look at the water," he suggested.

"…sure," she said in agreement, but her voice had changed from excited to cautious.

He had the cure for that. Deidara banked sharply, speeding up on the turn, she _screamed_ and grabbed onto the back of his robe, then snapped at him when he burst into laughter. "You did that on purpose, you creep!"

"Yes, I did," Deidara easily admitted. He leveled them out over the water, and turned the bird back towards land so she could see the conifer forest, the white cliffs, the distant clear-cut that marked a small farming community. "Great view, eh?"

She stared at the cliffs. "I think I know where we are."

"Yeah, doesn't matter now." Deidara made a pass by the cliffs before lifting over them, close to the tips of the conifers, picking up speed as he directed the construct south.

"It looks like the cliffs in north Sound, but the trees are wrong…"

"Close. This isn't Sound." Deidara glanced at her over his shoulder, wondering if he should tell her or let her figure it out. Startled comprehension crossed her face almost before the thought ended. He grinned. "Yeah, that's right. We're in the non-shinobi territories between Sound and Lightning."

She appeared faintly shocked. "Non-shinobi…"

"What, expect us to follow the rules? Akatsuki, remember?"

Deidara thought she would be happy knowing where she was if only because it would tell her that she wasn't very far away from Fire's border. Instead her eyes were wide and tinged with fear. "Where are you taking me?"

"Home," he said with a big grin.

"Whose home?"

He turned his head to glare at her over his shoulder. " _Zetsu's_ , duh. Whose home do you _think?_ "

"Where do you live?" she asked with perfect seriousness.

…She couldn't be _that_ dense.

Deidara threw one leg over the other so that, for an instant, it appeared as he rode the clay bird side-saddle before twisting to face her completely. Their knees touched as they both straddled the construct. He tried not to think about that, or about how wide her green eyes were as they looked into his. Sighing, Deidara rubbed two fingers over the crease in his brow. "I _told_ you, I'm taking _you_ home, okay? It's like Kisame said; you always walk the date to her door."

Impossibly her eyes widened further. A hand clapped over her mouth in a vain effort to stop a half-scream of realization from erupting. "Konoha? You … You're seriously taking me to—"

Deidara grinned crookedly. "Yeah."

"The Leader's changed his mind? He's letting me go?"

 _Accept a favor, why don't you, huh?_ thought Deidara, vexed. "Don't worry about that part, eh."

Unfortunately, she really _wasn't_ dense. "He doesn't know," she said, and it wasn't a question. Her eyes went from wide to narrow as she considered probabilities. "You can't mean to defect."

Deidara snorted. Him, one of those pathetic Leaf shinobi? Not a chance in hell. "You would be right about that, huh."

"Where are _you_ going?"

What kind of question was that? "I _told_ you—"

She made a negating slash with her hand and nearly overbalanced. " _After_ you take me to Konoha, where are you going?"

To Deidara, the question still didn't make any sense. He shrugged, automatically adjusting his balance with the movement because he was used to flying on a fast clay bird. "Where ever the Leader sends me, eh. Probably I'll be recalled to where he is."

After a moment she said carefully, "He doesn't strike me as the most merciful of men."

"He has his moments," said Deidara. "If he didn't, you'd be seriously screwed by now, wouldn't you?"

He didn't mean that in its most crass sense, yet she visibly flinched. It appeared as if she would wrap her arms around herself except she was busy hanging on to his construct.

So he did it for her.

Deidara placed his hands on her thighs and tugged her closer, so that her knees pressed the insides of his legs. Wrapping one arm around her shoulders, he coaxed her to lean forward. When she rested her forehead against his chest it seemed only natural to let the hand still on her thigh slip up, run over her hip and press against the small of her back. The loose sleeves of his cloak flapped in the wind; as he embraced her she virtually vanished from view against him. "Shhh," he soothed. "It's okay. You'll be okay now."

"You'll be killed," she said against his chest so quietly her breath tangled with the wind blowing by them and Deidara could only barely hear her. "He'll kill you. Why would you do something like this?"

Deidara grinned ruefully, moving the hand on her back in comforting circles. "Must be love, huh?"

Her reaction to that declaration was unexpected.

The small hands braced on his chest shoved against him with surprising strength, breaking his hold on her. In a flash she was on her feet, lunging sideways. Deidara was startled but he was also a ninja with reactions faster than conscious thought. He seized her by the upper arm before she could complete her jump. They were just over the treetops which wasn't much of a distance for a shinobi, but with her chakra drained she was normal and the fall could kill her.

He _had_ fought close-range on the back of his constructs before. Usually, however, Deidara was trying to throw an opponent off rather than prevent them from going over the side. Trying to restrain someone without hurting them and without dropping them was more difficult than he would have thought.

Mentally Deidara ordered the bird to the ground as they struggled. The urgency of his command made it plummet unexpectedly. She gasped and fell backwards, his grip on her upper arm bringing him down on top of her. For a moment his mind hazed as it struggled with the ramifications of the position, at least until she punched his shoulder. Releasing her, he sat up as the bird came to a sudden stop a foot above the forest floor. "Man, if you want down, just tell me!" Deidara shouted at her, rubbing his shoulder reflectively. "Don't jump off the freakin' bird and give me a freakin' heart attack!"

She gathered her feet under herself and pushed off, back-flipping off the bird in a graceful motion, landing in a deep crouch a few yards away. Spinning, she slugged the nearest object, an unsuspecting tree, as hard as she could.

"Careful!" yelled Deidara. "You'll hurt yourself—!"

He cut himself off as his eyes widened.

There was a crack in the tree. Not a large one, but not one that a _normal_ person could have put there. And she was shaking her hand as if it _stung_ , not as if she had just pulverized it by striking a solid object full force.

He was probably lucky his shoulder was still attached to the rest of him.

She didn't even notice, she was so focused on screaming at him. "It's not real! You're going to get yourself _killed_ over something that isn't real!"

"Do you think you could please hold off on the," Deidara started to say _hysterics_ but judging from the crack on that tree her chakra pathways were beginning to function so he modified it slightly, "on the _epiphany_ until I get you back to Konoha, okay?"

"We're enemies, Deidara, _enemies!_ "

"Well, then, you're taking advantage of an enemy's weakness like you're supposed to, eh? I shouldn't have to tell you that. What kind of shinobi are you?"

Her jaw dropped, and she looked slightly sick. "That—Sasori said that almost exactly right before—"

"He had a point, okay? If we're enemies, why do you _care_ what happens to me?"

"I – I – I'm a medic, I have to care about people —"

"Oh, sure, play the medic card, eh," grumbled Deidara, rolling his eyes. "You're a _shinobi_ medic, right, so you have to kill people, too! Or did Master Sasori get off'd by an infestation of ninja termites that just happened to be in the vicinity?"

She glared daggers at him. Deidara hoped she didn't remember that she was armed. He wouldn't be too surprised to have a fistful of kunai heading his way in another two seconds. "It doesn't _matter_ why I care, I just _do_!"

Deidara threw up his hands. _"Whatever!_ The only thing that's important is getting you out of here!"

And froze in mid-position, hands still raised, as he realized something very, very significant.

He could feel her chakra. It _was_ coming back, nowhere near full strength but recognizable as _her._ After months of captivity she wasn't used to restraining her power and in her emotional state she probably hadn't even thought about it.

Which meant she was broadcasting their position.

They were still in the non-shinobi territories so normally Deidara would not have cared. Civilians couldn't sense chakra, and there were rarely any need for ninjas to perform missions in non-shinobi countries. That was precisely the reason the Akatsuki set up bases in several of the civilian territories that bordered shinobi states.

Still, the Akatsuki base was far enough away that Deidara would not have been concerned except for one teeny, tiny little detail.

When he released his chakra checks, Kisame at full power was overwhelming.

Especially when that sense of power was unexpectedly coming from directly behind one's current position.

Hoping against hope it wasn't whom he knew it was, Deidara turned.

The two of them stood silently in the shadows of the forest a dozen yards away. "Well, well, well," said Kisame, his insane smirk broader and whiter than usual, "what have we here? Fancy meeting you two all the way out in the middle of nowhere."

The Uchiha said nothing. He didn't need too; his presence said all that was necessary.

"Aw, _hell_ ," muttered Deidara faintly.


	12. Chapter 12

Title: Vessel, Part 12  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Title: Vessel, Part 12  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 12**

* * *

Sakura was an emotional person.

She was quick to anger when family or friends were threatened. She was also empathic and sympathetic even to enemies.

It was why she was fundamentally unsuited to ever become ANBU. She could not block out her more tender emotions or her instinctual need to help rather than hurt wherever possible.

It had caused trouble for her before. Ordered to stay away, she had instead sprinted towards the possessed Naruto during that first mission with Sai, and Naruto — or, rather, his rampaging fox symbiont — nearly killed her.

Right now, it appeared as if her over-reaction to Deidara's saying — _what he had said—_ had just landed them both in an equally perilous situation.

Sakura realized that, although Deidara had his hands straight down by his sides, his cloak was arranged in such a way that she could see his hands while Kisame and Itachi couldn't. That made sense; Deidara's bloodline technique relied upon using his hands in such a way that the enemy didn't know what hit them until it was too late, which worked best if the enemy couldn't see the hand seals. One hand was clenched closed, presumably working on an explosive clay creation, but the other was going through a repeating series of movements that, because it had been a while, it took Sakura a moment to comprehend.

Deidara was flashing hand signals to her. Obviously Sakura didn't know any signals the Akatsuki used, and he didn't know any Konoha ones. There was, however, an underlying hand alphabet common to most villages, which was what Deidara was using to spell out instructions for her.

R-U-N

Over and over.

It was an imminently practical solution. Deidara was powerful, perhaps even powerful enough to survive a physical confrontation with two other preternaturally strong shinobi. Sakura was still drained, only beginning to feel the tickle of chakra along her extremities. Although her perfect chakra control was legendary, right now it was fragmented as chakra surged painfully along one pathway and appeared completely absent in another. She could try to force it to her feet and run like crazy while Deidara held the other two off. It might even work.

Except that Sakura _was_ an emotional person, the sort of person who ran into danger to help a friend rather than away from it to save herself.

"No," she said clearly.

"Tch," grumbled Deidara, although he stopped flashing those urgent hand signals at her.

Across from them, the big water specialist sighed in an exaggerated manner. "Kids," said Kisame, "this is all very sweet and romantic and so on, but it isn't _practical_. Go back to the compound before the Leader finds out."

"Tch," said Deidara again, but there was a different note to the indistinct noise. Sakura could tell, somehow, that he was now grinning that wide, half-mad smirk of his. She could also see that both his hands were open and empty.

The next instant, the ground behind Itachi and Kisame imploded.

Sakura had the impression of segmented monsters, vaguely centipede-like but with squared-off heads, large enough to tower over Kisame. She didn't get a good look because Deidara blurred out of existence in front of her and the next thing she knew she was over his shoulder staring at one of the clouds on his cloak as he leapt towards his bird. There was a roar of compressed pressure that she took to be a strike from Kisame's sword, following by a dull shattering noise. Deidara laughed under his breath. "Yeah, like that'll work." Reaching the flying clay construct Deidara dropped her without any preamble. Scrambling to a sitting position, Sakura took in the chaotic scene as fragmented impressions.

 _Kisame fighting not one big monster but several smaller ones as the separated segments of the construct he thought destroyed came to life and converged on him—_

 _Itachi wrapped up like umeboshiin in onigiri as two of the segmented monsters curled around his torso, legs and face, effectively blocking the use of his sharingan—_

Deidara preformed a seal with one hand and snarled, "Katsu!"

— _before blowing up in a curiously bloodless puff of smoke—_

"Hell, I knew that was too easy," gritted Deidara.

"Indeed," came a quiet voice directly behind Sakura.

From the direction of the sound Itachi was standing over her kneeling body. Sakura didn't risk a glance. Instead she attempted to focus what little chakra she could gather into her elbow and drove straight back, hoping to connect in a _very_ vulnerable area.

Had she been successful, there was little doubt any future revival of the Uchiha clan would have become the sole provenance of Sasuke.

However, Sakura drove _through_ Itachi with far too much ease. She wasn't surprised to be surrounded by the gray smoke that typified a shadow clone phasing out of existence.

"Gotta fly," Deidara bit out, which Sakura took as a directive to hang on tight to anything she could. She curled her fingers into his robe and tightened her knees against the clay bird. There was a disorienting sensation of leaving her stomach behind as the bird lurched straight up.

Before they cleared the treetops, however, everything came to a crashing halt.

Perhaps a better turn of phrase would be a _drenching_ halt.

It was a grim fact that clay did not hold its cohesion well when engulfed in a solid column of water.

Swearing violently before cutting off and coughing as he took in a mouthful of water, Deidara reached for Sakura in mid-fall. He landed on one knee, Sakura cradled in his arms. His wet hair was flat against his head, streamed across his face. The two were immediately surrounded by Itachi shadow clones.

His mouth so close to her ear that Sakura could feel his lips move, "Fight?" Deidara asked in a barely-audible tone.

"Can you?"

His smile was savage. "Wet clay makes great quicksand. If Kisame sucks the water out of it, it'll also make him one _terrific_ tomb. As for Itachi; oh, I have techniques developed _just_ for killing him, eh."

Sakura tried not to be shocked at his lethal intent. Even years after his desertion most Leaf ninjas spoke of retrieving Sasuke rather than eliminating him; evidently life in the Akatsuki was far more cutthroat.

Which made it odd that Kisame and Itachi had moved to contain more than attack.

"Talk," Sakura said. "Try talk."

* * *

 _Talk? She wants to freakin'_ talk?!

His other unvoiced option was _run_. He was faster than Itachi, and with the adrenalin currently racing through his body likely faster than Kisame as well. "Talk" was not even on his short list.

His head was so close to hers Deidara couldn't actually see what she was doing, although he could hear the creak of her leather glove as she flexed her uninjured hand.

… _Oh._ Stall _. Stall until her chakra pathways open up more…_

Yeah, that he understood. All he had to do, Deidara thought grimly, was think of something interesting enough to keep the other two Akatsuki from attacking again.

…Yeah, that's all.

He stood, releasing her legs so that her feet could swing to the ground, anchoring her in place next to him with the arm around her shoulders. "Back off," he growled at the semi-circle of Itachi clones.

Surprisingly, they all 'poof'd' out of existence. The real Itachi stood next to Kisame, looking as if he had never moved from his original position during the fight. Perhaps he hadn't. The Uchiha's specialty _was_ deceiving the senses.

Reaching up with his free hand, Deidara pulled off the scope covering his left eye and clenched his right eye closed. He surveyed the Uchiha critically. Although it might be a clone, at least Deidara could tell that they weren't caught in a genjutsu. He had trained his eye to resist and overcome the effects of the sharingan; as long as he kept his untrained eye closed, the sharingan would have no effect on him.

"Fun workout," growled Kisame, who did not appear as if he had truly enjoyed himself. Water dripped off of him, making the Akatsuki cloak cling. Normally he didn't mind being wet, but there was a nip to the air and Kisame hated being cold. Little wonder he looked so cross. Deidara theorized that the big male must have tapped into the forest's underground water table to perform his jutsu. "Enough playing, kids. Itachi and I have work to do. Go back to the base and we'll forget this ever happened."

Deidara snorted. "What, if we promise to be good and not stop for candy on the way back, you'll let us go? I don't think so, eh."

"Don't," said the Uchiha in a tone that was, even for him, very cold, "be foolish enough to make us do this." Kisame punctuated his partner's comment with a teeth-baring smirk that lacked any true amusement.

Deidara dropped his arm from Sakura's shoulders and moved slightly in front of her. "Not making you do anything. Not making _anyone_ do anything, okay?"

Kisame braced his sword against his shoulder so that he could free up one hand to slap over his face. "Yes, the situation sucks. It _sucks,_ Deidara. We all agree it sucks. We don't like it. We haven't from the beginning. _That doesn't change anything_ ," he snarled with sudden anger. The big male stopped, took a breath, and finished more calmly with, "We need a vessel, and individuals with appropriate skills to both provide it and to contribute to it. That's all."

Deidara shook his head. "Not good enough."

With only the slightest trace of mild curiosity in his voice, the Uchiha asked, "You would prefer it to be one of us?"

Kisame scowled and glared down at the ground.

Deidara smirked as his one open eye narrowed. " _She_ prefers that it's not _any_ of us. That's all." He folded his hands into his wide sleeves, absently rolling clay between his fingers. _A sign, woman, give me a sign, tell me when to move—!_ Nothing. Her breathing was calm; whatever she was waiting for hadn't happened yet.

"Why all the urgency now?" asked Kisame, not looking at either of them. "You're _really_ not pregnant, Sakura?" There was an outraged squawk from behind Deidara. She lunged into Deidara's line of sight as she started forward indignantly. Grabbing her by the elbow, Deidara searched her face as he held her in place. No, she wasn't attacking; she was gearing up for one of her shouting fits. Realizing the same thing, Kisame shrugged defensively. "Well, you've been acting weird all week, I just thought—"

"She's not pregnant," insisted Deidara crossly as she fumed impotently next to him. "There's no vessel, there isn't _going_ to be a vessel, you aren't losing anything by letting her go!"

The Uchiha cocked his head as his gaze turned towards Sakura, sharingan swirling. "I see that she isn't," he murmured. Sakura gave an outraged gasp and splayed her fingers across her stomach, glaring, before scowling and dropping her hands as she realized it was probably a bluff. The byakugan could show physical surroundings and conditions, but the sharingan stopped at mind control. The Uchiha turned back to Deidara and said, "Why not?"

 _That_ threw Deidara. He stammered, "We haven't — she just _isn't_ , okay?"

"If you prefer men, just use a jutsu on her and pretend—"

Deidara sputtered. "I do NOT prefer men, okay?!" In spite of the situation, Kisame started chuckling. His face red, Deidara struggled for what to say. "It's just — it's just—"

"It's just—?" repeated the Uchiha in his usual even tone.

"I can't do that to a kid of mine," snapped Deidara. "I _won't_."

Kisame stopped laughing.

The Uchiha actually rocked back on his heels, head tilted as he stared into Deidara's flushed face.

"I see," he finally intoned with what was, even for him, an distinct lack of verbal emphasis. The Uchiha switched his gaze so that he looked up at his partner. Kisame appeared grim, mouth pressed together in a white slash across his face as he stared down at the forest floor.

The perceived threat level dropped as Kisame reined in his chakra. The Uchiha didn't follow suit, but since his gaze was no longer focused near him or Sakura, Deidara concluded Itachi was likewise less dangerous than he had been just five seconds earlier.

Amazingly, this _talking_ thing was working.

Which was a shame, because he was antsy and he _really_ wanted to blow something up. Especially Itachi.

"So just let us go," said Deidara when no one else seemed willing to say anything. "There's no point in us going back to base. I'm not going to let anything happen to her."

" _You_ can't leave," responded the Uchiha flatly.

That was a curious emphasis. Deidara pressed his opening, thinking that he was getting good at the whole 'talking' thing. If the Akatsuki did ever managed to establish their own country, perhaps he could be an ambassador. "I'll come back, I'll take whatever punishment, but let us go _now_." No response from the other two as they remained the same position, the Uchiha looking steadily at Kisame, Kisame utterly fascinated by the ground in front of him. "At least let me take her to Fire's border. Her chakra isn't stable yet, she won't make it by herself, okay?"

The Uchiha was still staring at Kisame instead of paying any attention to them. The big male finally sighed and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

It was _creepy_ the way the two of them communicated so well without words. At the same time, though, Deidara thought it was too bad Tobi couldn't pull that trick off so that he wouldn't have to listen to his partner's general weirdness.

"The reports said he was about a day away," Kisame told the Uchiha. "That was last night."

It was said casually, as if Kisame were reminding Itachi of something.

For Sakura and Deidara it was out of context. The two exchanged questioning looks. The Uchiha, however, nodded. "Acceptable."

"If _he_ finds out, we could all be dead," Kisame added in the same casual manner. This seemed to be a different _he_ than was referred to in the first statement.

"Acceptable," said the Uchiha again.

"For you, maybe," said Sakura, regarding them both warily. "What are you two babbling about?"

"Your friend the jinchuuriki has slipped his leash and is making his way here," said the Uchiha. Sakura made the same strangled half-scream she made when Deidara told her that he was taking her home, and again clapped her own hand over her mouth to smother the squeal. Itachi continued, severely, "For someone who wants to be Hokage, he has a hard time placing the needs of the village above his selfish personal desire to protect his friends."

Deidara perked up. "He's here, eh? If we can grab him, the Leader won't be so pissed at—" Sakura slapped at his shoulder, which fortunately Deidara caught out of the corner of his eye. He jumped away and scowled at her. "What's that for!?"

"Aw, they're so _cute_ ," snickered Kisame.

The Uchiha continued speaking as if the little interplay hadn't occurred. "He is being followed by a retrieval party from the Leaf headed up by Nara Shikamaru, as well as a retrieval party from the Sand led by Sabaku no Kankuro. Or so the story is going to go. However, the party from Leaf caught up with him two days ago and, instead of taking him back, is continuing with him as they try to track _her_ down. I have no doubt the same thing will happen when the Sand shinobi make contact, which should be later today if it hasn't already happened. This selfishness seems to be a particular characteristic of the shinobi of your generation," he told Sakura sternly.

The Uchiha sounded like a disapproving schoolmarm. Sakura scowled at him, no doubt thinking someone who was only five years older than she and who had _murdered his entire clan_ should not be giving lectures on personal loyalties versus mission objectives. "Is Naruto your mission?" she asked suspiciously.

"Scouting him, yes. We are only to engage under certain conditions. Those conditions do not exist."

"I thought luring him here was part of the plan."

"Not when he is accompanied by ANBU squads from two different countries," said Kisame sourly. "Him we could take out. Him plus a bunch of ANBU getting underfoot, too complicated."

She looked like she might want to argue the point. Not about the ANBU squads getting in the way, Deidara knew; about any of them being a match for the jinchuuriki. He headed off the argument by clarifying an important point. "We're letting her go, right?"

"She is taking advantage of our absence to escape," responded the Uchiha evenly.

Kisame chuckled again. "I hope you don't mind looking like an idiot," he smirked at Deidara.

"Tch, whatever," grumbled Deidara, knowing it was necessary but thinking Kisame was enjoying that part a little _too_ much.


	13. Chapter 13

Title: Vessel, Part 13

Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Part 13**

* * *

Deidara made a new clay bird, this one built more for comfort than speed, with a broader back and plump wings. Jumping lightly to its back, he had it stretch one of its blunt wings down and held out a hand to help her climb on. Before leaving the battle site he performed a series of seals over the wet mess that had been the original bird. The clay sluiced away, leaving a surprisingly-undamaged duffle bag sitting incongruously on the forest floor. The bird hovered momentarily, snagged the bag in one talon, and slowly rose above the treeline. The slight southerly breeze Deidara had noted earlier was still present, ruffling her short hair and blowing his bangs out of his face. Still standing behind her, he carefully fitted his scope it its usual position.

In the branches of the trees under them there were flashes of fluttering black that phased in and out of sight as Kisame and the Uchiha proceeded on foot.

Deidara did not entirely trust them.

Admittedly, Deidara _never_ trusted Itachi. As the water specialist was the Uchiha's partner that meant by extension he didn't trust Kisame either.

For two people who agreed that the Akatsuki needed a vessel, they were letting her go awfully easily. In addition, their direction was a little too easterly for Deidara's comfort. It made sense only if the jinchuuriki was approaching from Sound's border. Which he might be since she had been taken near Sound, but _Fire's_ nearest border was directly south. For her own safety, Deidara wanted her in her native land as soon as possible.

Deidara was tempted to give them the slip just for the heck of it, but her chakra was still erratic, spiking at odd moments. If she had been at full strength the two of them together had an excellent chance of taking the other Akatsuki members out. Since she wasn't, Deidara could only fantasize about it.

They were nice fantasies, especially the one where he released the devastating C4 technique in such a way that its distinctive chakra pattern was invisible, meaning the Uchiha was painfully disintegrated from the inside out before he could use that accursed sharigan of his to analyze and escape the attack. The fantasies were brief, however, because there was a real live woman nearby who still needed his help, and she hadn't been rescued yet.

He settled behind her rather than in front as he had on the journey here. Focusing on the sense of Kisame's chakra, Deidara sent the bird on a smooth glide as the other Akatsuki members ran on chakra-enhanced feet towards the jinchuuriki's location. At first he kept his hands loosely on the relatively neutral territory of her waist. Hey, he didn't want her falling off, right? After a while, however, her posture relaxed to the point where she was resting her shoulders lightly against his chest. She voiced no objection when his hands strayed from her sides to cross over her stomach, pulling her more firmly against him. Deidara bent his neck to press his cheek to the top of her head, smiling as he felt the wisps that escaped her forehead protector brush against his face.

He liked her hair.

Oh, not the _color_ , the color was absurd, but it was smooth like the finest-grained clay against his fingers, and he just enjoyed the _feel_ of it.

It was rather sweet.

Which, since he really didn't _do_ sweet, just reaffirmed that Deidara had it bad.

He was going to have to part from her soon.

It would be difficult for a number of reasons.

He sorta kinda had _ideas_ about recreational activities during the multi-day journey to Konoha. Obviously that was shot to hell now.

And there was something else.

She seemed to have a lot of guy friends. Her teammates, Sai and Kakashi, the jinchuuriki, apparently this Shika-whatever person if someone who was an ANBU _captain_ was willing to ignore orders in order to rescue her, and wasn't she the reason Master Sasori's poison hadn't wiped Kankuro out? And now _Kankuro_ , not even of Leaf, was risking the diplomatic ties between the countries to help the jinchuuriki liberate her.

And _Sasuke._

Deidara found it hard to say which Uchiha was currently highest on his hit list.

Obviously none of them were competition, exactly, but _they_ would have free access to her _(her smiles, her laughs, her furious yelling, her painful blows to the shoulder, all of her)_ where _he_ no longer would.

There was a shift from the woman he was holding. Lifting his head, he wondered if she were attempting to get away as he felt gathering chakra. There was no attempt to break free of his hold, however. He propped his chin on her shoulder (which offered a nice view of the curves of her chest, although that was _completely_ incidental) and watched as she pulled the glove off her uninjured hand. A gentle green glow surrounded it. She touched the tips of her fingers to the back of her injured hand. The glow appeared to seep under the bandages, into her skin. There was a near-silent exhale of relief from her before she began unwinding the long strips of gauze. The exposed skin was unbroken, although there were still green-tinged remnants of some of the deeper bruises around her knuckles. She flexed the hand experimentally a few times before reaching into her jounin vest to pull out the other glove. She spent a little while carefully tugging it onto the hand she just healed, shoulders pressing deeper against his chest as she shifted. Deidara sat up straight and closed his eyes, trying to tuck the sensations of _warm_ and _soft_ away as well so he could recall them at will…

"You okay?"

…right, _she_ was worried about _him_.

Opening his eyes to find her green ones looking at his face quizzically, Deidara chuckled ruefully. It was pathetic; he had spent most of his life as a member of the Akatsuki, which had not prepared him for anyone like _her_. "Yeah, I'm great," he assured her. "What's the first thing you're going to do when you get back to Konoha, eh? Smell the coffee?"

She laughed. "Probably get dragged to the Ichiraku for ramen," she said, wrinkling her nose. "It's all Naruto eats, although maybe he'll pay for once!"

"Good ramen there?" Deidara asked, thinking, _From the look on her face probably not._

"Well, it's good for _ramen_."

"What else, then?"

She spent the next while talking about Konoha and what she missed and what she was going to do and who she was going to see, and although Deidara did pay attention well enough to respond when necessary, mostly he just soaked in the cadence of her voice to add to the memories in his mind, knowing full well that, after today, he would probably never hear her voice again.

* * *

After a couple of hours traveling (still more east than south, which continued to make Deidara nervous), the sense of Kisame's chakra became stationary. The terrain was transitional, mostly hardwoods although some conifers struggled on the higher elevations, punctuated by wide overgrown clearings and small ponds. Deidara swooped down. The other two Akatsuki members were standing in the trees next to a clearing. Their cloaks melded with the broken light in such a way that they would go unnoticed unless someone looked right at them and expected to see them.

He hovered just off the clearing's floor, ready to take off again in case of a double-cross. She leapt off immediately, sprinting towards the tree Kisame stood in. Deidara grimaced — _too trusting, huh —_ and clenched a fist into his clay as he stared a warning at the other two

There was a wry twist to Kisame's mouth before he jumped down to ground level. Deidara knew the other male was thinking the exact same thing.

"Is Naruto nearby?" she demanded. She was doing that _bouncing_ thing she did when excited, rocking forward on her toes, catching herself and resuming a normal stance before rocking forward again.

As usual, the Uchiha provided a non-answer. "Not far." He stared off into the distance as if something intrigued him there.

"We sent out clones last night," Kisame told her. "One of mine just made contact with the Sand contingent. As Itachi thought, they've hooked up with your friend."

She glared at Kisame and said severely, "You _of course_ are not using your clone to fight Kankuro, right?"

He grinned widely, made a hand seal, and replied blandly, "As of right now, I _of course_ am not."

"Byakugan," said the Uchiha unexpectedly. He flashed through hand seals recognizable as a series often used to dissipate clones before joining them at ground level. "A member of the Hyuuga clan is with the Leaf shinobi." He glanced up at his partner. "We will be discovered soon."

At that same instant Deidara felt it; the sense of something powerful yet distant.

The jinchuuriki was approaching. The angle was off, he didn't yet know their exact location, but once the byakugan user was in range unless they scattered clones far and wide as a distraction, the Akatsuki members and their companion would be _had._

Fingers lovingly stroking through the clay in his pouch, Deidara had to fight down a shiver of pre-battle excitement.

Kisame and the Uchiha immediately reined in their chakra. After a hesitant glance at Sakura, Deidara did as well. _She_ didn't notice, demanding of the Uchiha _which_ Hyuuga, where were they coming from, (more suspiciously) how did they plan on handing her over, couldn't she just _go_ so they could avoid a confrontation? It wasn't so much that Itachi was ignoring her (although he was) as that she couldn't wait for any responses, so eager and intent was she on the proximity of her Konoha comrades.

 _She's in a hurry to leave me._ The thought was accompanied by melancholy but surprisingly lacked bitterness. Diedara wanted her safe and happy; judging from the glimmer of her eyes, the 'happy' part was all but assured now.

Within a few minutes, and despite what his erstwhile 'teammates' might have planned, Deidara was determined that the 'safe' part would be equally assured.

No getting around it; it really _was_ almost time to let her go.

Deidara realized that if he didn't do something (a specific something) _now_ he was going to regret it. And while regret was a _good_ thing for some artists (it fed into their angst, which in turn fed into their creative drive), 'angst' was like 'cute' and 'sweet' in that he really didn't _do_ it. Nor did his art require it of him. Sooo…

He finally hopped off the hovering clay bird.

She had her back to him, standing next to Kisame and slightly behind the Uchiha, arms akimbo and foot beginning to tap as she tried to get the latter's attention. _Now that just won't do, okay?_ thought Deidara in amusement. _The only one she should be paying attention to –_

He grabbed her by the elbow, spinning her around off-balance. Gasping she sank her fingers into the cloak just below his shoulders. Steadying her with one hand against the small of her back, Deidara lowered his head.

— _is me._

For a first kiss it wasn't too bad. Noses didn't bump, teeth didn't click together, and she only jumped a little bit when the mouth on the hand carefully folded around her neck to hold her head at the right angle began to nibble. Suddenly she just _melted_ into him, her body fitting the curve of his, hands sliding up to twist into his hair, tongue lightly tracing his bottom lip. Deidara had to stop because it was _too_ intense, far too intense with an _audience_ present, and for a moment they just rested their foreheads against each other and breathed the same air as his hair feathered against her face and hers curled between his fingers.

He slit his eyes open a sliver to look at her, finding he was too close to discern features or expressions. "You could stay, eh?"

She laughed softly against his mouth. It felt … interesting. "As long as people in your organization keep talking about 'vessels', no."

Clenching his eyes closed and not _caring_ that the other two could hear them, Deidara whispered, "I love you."

She shook her head, or tried to against his light clasp. "No, you don't. This isn't real, Deidara."

"It's real enough in the moment, okay?" he insisted, and kissed her again to prove it.

"They're close," he heard the Uchiha murmur. Pulling away, she turned her head, wide-eyed. Deidara could sense several chakra signatures now, and it seemed she could as well. Even though he was still holding her, her mind was no longer on him.

… _Well. Looks like the moment is over, huh._

Deidara smiled wryly (a real smile, not a smirk, but she didn't see it because she wasn't looking at him) and released her. As soon as he did she turned fully away from him, tense with the need to run in the other direction.

"I'll let them know we're here, okay?"

Kisame just nodded, his eyes studiously blank, while the Uchiha didn't make any response at all. But she swung around again, concern across her features, and he tried not to notice how wet her mouth looked. "Be careful," she said urgently.

Deidara did smirk then. "Heh, he hasn't gotten me yet, okay?" Jumping on the back of the bird, he stood solidly on it as it lifted, one hand cocked against his hip. He thought he could feel her eyes on him, although he decided not to look just in case he was wrong. The bird spiraled a few times over the clearing as it gained altitude. When he was high enough he slid down into a sitting position between its wings and directed it towards the jinchuuriki's chakra signature.

They _were_ close as ninjas measured distance, a bare two miles away, gathered in a clearing having a discussion that looked intense enough to be called an argument. Using his scope to zoom in, Deidara was surprised to find none of the ANBU wearing their masks. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement that they were no longer on the ANBU mission of retrieval assigned to them originally. Kankuro was easy to spot with his characteristic battle paint, standing slightly to one side of the jinchuuriki with his arms folded and head cocked as if listening. On the other side were two young men, one with spiked hair forced into a top knot, the other with silver eyes and a long pony tail. He was the one arguing with the jinchuuriki. Not _a_ Hyuuga, thought Deidara, but _the_ Hyuuga; the one that discovered Deidara's hiding place after the battle in Suna and forced him to unleash the self-detonation technique.

When he thought about it, Deidara realized he had a _surprising_ number of grudges against Konoha shinobi.

Lucky for all of them it wasn't the right time for him to act on any of those grudges.

The one with the top-knot heaved an obvious sigh and cast his eyes upward as if asking for strength. For an instant through the scope, their eyes locked.

Deidara waved jauntily with one hand as he threw a dozen butterfly sculptures in a graceful arc with the other. They fluttered erratically towards the clearing. Before any of his creations got close enough to be a threat, Deidara put his hands together. " _Katsu!"_ There were a dozen small pops as the shinobi below scattered in anticipation of an explosion yet were only showered with a light smattering of dust.

 _That_ should get their attention. Grinning, Deidara looped the bird around to lead them back to the waiting Akatsuki members.

Or that was the plan.

His mount shuddered as a solid 'thud' reverberated through it. Suddenly Deidara was not alone. Crouched in front of him was the jinchuuriki.

To say Deidara was caught off guard was putting it mildly. The last person who landed on his clay mount from such a distance had wings.

For a moment the two were nose-to-nose, Naruto's expression intense, Deidara's one visible eye wide with astonishment.

" _Where is she?"_ growled the jinchuuriki.

… _Whoa. Powerful. More powerful than Kisame._

Deidara smirked madly. He was having more fun that he expected. "Tch, if you wanna go for a ride you should ask nice, okay?"

"Tell me or I'll gut you where you sit."

The boy Deidara remembered had a lot of bluster in him, justifying Itachi's description as one who shouted first and then charged without thinking. The man in front of him stated the words with the weight of hard fact. Deidara's grin widened. _Oh, I don't think Itachi and Kisame will_ ever _be able to bring_ you _in, eh,_ he thought with cold satisfaction.

Deidara held up his hands, which might have been considered a peaceful gesture except for the wiggling tongues set in his palms. "I'm willing to take you to her, seriously." Truthfully, they were almost there already. Not that he planned on making it easy for the man who would be taking _her_ away from him.

" _Naruto!"_

Involuntarily the man's gaze pivoted downward.

"See?" said Deidara. Laughing manically, he wrenched the bird into a power turn, accelerated, and set it into a spin. The jinchuuriki stubbornly refused to fall off, clamping his knees on the bird's neck so hard the clay cracked. Gathering his feet under him, Deidara sprang off, setting his hands together in a familiar seal.

 _She_ would be angry with him.

…well, he'd deal with it. He was crazy about her, but he wasn't _whipped_ or anything.

Besides, she was _cute_ when she got angry. And he had to deliver that bag with her things in it somehow, right?

" _Katsu!"_

* * *

Sakura could see the entire situation unfolding from her perch in a treetop by the clearing, where she had raced after sensing Naruto's chakra practically on top of them. Her mouth agape, she watched as Deidara vacated the bird, blew it up in an explosion that was more dust than heat, then gasped with her fingers over her lips as Naruto plummeted towards the ground. His landing was obscured by the trees, although he had already adjusted his free fall into a controlled one by maneuvering so that he fell feet-first.

He was having trouble keeping out of the way of the much-misused duffle bag that the late mount had clenched in its feet. The last Sakura saw, Naruto had just grabbed it in one of his big hands to try and control it before he vanished behind the trees.

Kisame clapped a hand over his face. "Oi, can't he go for five minutes without blowing anything up…?"

The Uchiha raised an eyebrow. "You were expecting him _not_ to blow something up?"

"Well, it's hard to say 'we come in peace' and 'here's your missing shinobi, who _isn't_ rigged to explode' after that."

At that moment a cackle of laughter was heard. Deidara, on a much smaller bird than the one he left on, buzzed the clearing once before jumping down and landing in a deep crouch. Before he could get up Sakura barreled into him, slapping at his shoulders and chest ineffectively. The two rolled around, Deidara covering his face with his arms. "Ow, _ow!_ Now what're you beating me up for, huh?"

"You _idiot!_ What did you do that for, huh?"

"Oh, great," Kisame groaned. "They're beginning to speak alike. Kill me now."

"Don't say that too loudly," suggested the Uchiha. "Someone might take you seriously."

"What?" asked Deidara, innocently. "I was just delivering your bag, that's all."

 _Slap!_ "You could have hurt Naruto!" _Slap!_

"Some dust and a little fall isn't going to hurt that one, okay?" scoffed Deidara.

"He has a point," Kisame concurred, albeit from a safe distance.

Counseled the Uchiha, "Don't get involved." He raised his voice slightly. "Deidara, you might want to _not_ look as if you're fighting Sakura. We have company."

That much was true. The trees on the far side of the clearing were now bristling with shinobi. In the clearing itself Sakura could see Kankuro and Shikamaru. Neji was in the shadows behind them, silver eyes framed by chakra channels as he leveled his bloodline limit on the Akatsuki blocking Sakura from the view of those who had come for her. Sighing, Deidara rolled to his feet and offered Sakura a hand up.

Stepping out of the trees between Kankuro and Shikamaru came Naruto, looking highly irritated as he flung a duffle bag to the ground.

Kisame grinned. "We take them on?" he asked Itachi.

"No. Our mission was reconnaissance."

Kisame sighed. "We always seem to be running away from this guy," he complained.

On the other side of the clearing, "They _do_ have Sakura. Bothersome," grumbled Shikamaru, looking just as put-out as Kisame. He raised his voice slightly. "Something you guys want?

"An exchange," said Kisame.

Sakura lunged forward and slapped Kisame on the arm. Shikamaru's eyebrows lifted.

"Did I say 'exchange'?" Kisame wondered. "Sorry, force of habit. I mean, here's your missing shinobi. Take her. She's not wired to explode or anything. Honest."

The Uchiha actually sighed.

"She doesn't seem to be harmed," reported Neji in a low voice. "Or wired, as far as that goes."

"Clay?" asked Naruto.

"Smudges," replied Neji after a moment. "Nothing that looks organized enough to be explosives."

Naruto grinned as he cupped his fist against his opposite hand, cracking his knuckles. "Well, then…"

"Wait," said Shikamaru and Kankuro at the same time. They glanced at each other. Kankuro nodded and stepped back slightly, yielding the position of authority.

Naruto growled. He was much calmer than he had been as a teenager, just not where Sakura was concerned. There were signs that his more bestial side was close to the surface; pupils that were a little too oblong, fangs that were a little too pronounced; but so far he had held himself together well.

Shikamaru had agreed to this against his better judgment, as had Neji. However, Ten-ten made a surprisingly good argument. As long as Sakura was missing, Naruto would have to be contained. And, realistically speaking, if he lost control Naruto _couldn't_ be contained. Better to find Sakura than risk Naruto losing control while he was anywhere near Konoha, suggested Ten-ten.

Truth was, Shikamaru would have agreed anyway. Arguing with Naruto when he _really_ wanted to do something was just too much of a bother. He had a feeling that was why the Hokage picked him as team leader, before packing his mission squad with people who were friends of both Sakura and Naruto. Ten-ten just gave him something _reasonable_ to put in his report. He'd have to remember to be grateful to her, sometime after he got over the troublesome nature of the entire episode.

His hands in his pockets, Shikamaru said, "So, basically, you don't want anything from us."

Kisame and Deidara shook their heads 'no.' The Uchiha didn't move.

"And you just want to give Sakura back."

Kisame and Deidara nodded their heads 'yes.' The Uchiha still didn't move.

Shikamaru shrugged. "No problem, then. Sakura?"

She was standing behind Deidara, watching the situation unfold with wide eyes. "Um, what?"

"What are you doing over there, woman? You're being a drag."

Sakura tried to look at Deidara. He refused to meet her eyes, gazing instead at the ground. Kisame stepped back slightly to address her. "It's up to you, of course, but you should remember that most of these guys _want_ to fight."

"Including you." It wasn't a question.

Kisame smiled his sharp-toothed smile. " _Especially_ me."

Sakura still hesitated. There was no question of her staying, she didn't even remotely want to stay, but-— "What's going to happen to Deidara?"

"Not your concern," said the Uchiha.

" _Nothing_ ," snorted Deidara. " _Go_ already."

"We've got it covered," Kisame told her, his voice almost gentle. "Deidara's right, you should go."

Cautiously Sakura took a step forward so that she was in front of Kisame. Two more steps took her past Deidara; he looked to the side away from her. Another step after that brought Sakura even with the Uchiha. He wasn't paying any attention to her, as far as she could tell; he hadn't taken his eyes off the trio of shinobi that stood at the opposite edge of the clearing since they first arrived.

One more step to move in front of the Akatsuki members.

Then Sakura broke into a sprint, and didn't slow down until she barreled into Naruto and _had_ to stop. She wasn't sure when she started sobbing, but it was long before Naruto's arms closed around her.

The three shinobi stared at the Akatsuki members with death in their eyes.

"I'm fine, I'm _fine!"_ Sakura warbled out. "I'm so happy to _see_ you, that's all." Pulling away, she dashed away tears and smiled brightly up at her friend, alarmed to see Naruto's attention still on the three Akatsuki members standing on the opposite side of the field. The pupils in his eyes constricted dangerously into something that was _not human_. "Naruto, it's okay! I'm not hurt, they didn't hurt me. Let's just go home!"

Shikamaru gazed piercingly at her rather than the nearby enemies. After a moment, his posture relaxed into its usual indolent slouch. Shikamaru sighed. "It's too troublesome to fight three Akatsuki at once," he pointed out.

"You are _the_ primary mission for our organization," said the Uchiha coolly, barely glancing in Naruto's direction. "I suggest you leave before we remember that."

"Hate to say it," said Kankuro, "but I agree with him. One or two of them we could handle; not all three at once."

Sakura patted Naruto on the shoulder, trying to get his attention. "I just want to go home, Naruto, _please_."

It was likely the 'please' that got his attention. Sakura wasn't one to ask for favors even when they were genin. With a small relaxation of muscle Naruto gazed down at her, and within a few seconds of their eyes meeting it was hard to believe the young man had any hostility in him whatsoever. One big hand moved from her back to lightly touch her face, brushing away the remaining tears on her cheek. "Home sounds good," he agreed cheerfully. "You know, we are both in _so_ much trouble with granny Tsunade, it isn't funny."

Sniffling, Sakura mumbled, "I found myself missing how she acts after a _hangover_ , I was so homesick."

Kankuro chuckled, touched her lightly on the shoulder, and signaled his Sand shinobi to fall back.

Shikamaru shook his head at Neji, who was looking at him quizzically. "Naruto goes next, we bring up the rear. They are being painfully reasonable, but if we leave him in the back the Akatsuki may not be able to resist the temptation."

There was a snort from one of the Akatsuki, although with distance between them it was hard to say whom.

"Just a second," said Sakura. She tried to push away from Naruto. He loosened his grip but refused to let her go, placing a hand on her shoulder when she started to step towards the Akatsuki. Pausing, Sakura glanced back into his concerned blue eyes. She stopped where she was and bowed, deep enough to be formal, not so deep that Naruto needed to let go of her. "Thank you for taking care of me," she said, raising her voice enough to carry.

"No big deal, eh," muttered Deidara, looking away as faint color touched the edge of his cheekbones.

"You honored us with your presence," said the Uchiha politely. Whether or not he _meant_ what he said was anyone's guess.

Kisame chuckled. "It was fun," he said, grinning broadly. "We'll have to do it again sometime."

Sakura appeared faintly alarmed, and Naruto scowled mightily.

"Or not," Kisame smirked.

Sakura looked again over her shoulder, at Naruto and Shikamaru, Neji in the tree behind them, and for the first time noticing Ten-ten smiling at her from behind Neji's tree. When she turned around again no one stood at the clearing's opposite side, nor did any indication remain that anyone had ever been there.

That was as it should be.

Sakura smiled ruefully at the empty space that had held the three men who had been so important in her life the last few months before looking up into Naruto's sincere blue eyes. Her smile relaxed into a more genuine grin. Yes, _he_ was real, and the emotions they had for each were real, honed through the Team 7 and Team Kakashi years.

It was time to head back to reality.

It was time to go home.

* * *

The End

(Except for the epilog)

Yep, no lemon (not even close) in this story. If you're feeling the lack, good news: I write erotica professionally. Check out "Going Up!" by Safyre Starr over on Amazon. For just 99 cents, you can get a lot of bang for your buck!


	14. Epilog

**Chapter 14: Vessel, Epilog**

Title: Vessel, Epilog  
Fandom: Naruto, post time-slip  
Rating: R or Mature, depending on the archive  
Archive: No archives unless I put them there myself, no MSTings.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters I write about in fanfiction. I'm only a little bitter about it.

* * *

 **Vessel, Epilog**

* * *

The Leader was not happy when informed that the mother of his ultimate jinchuuriki had escaped.

Not that Kisame had thought the Leader would be the least bit phlegmatic about it. It was why he suggested that Deidara not be present for the initial interview.

Deidara was suspicious, thinking the other two meant to undermine his position. "What position?" demanded Kisame. "You _did_ let her go. We're going to make it look like it was accidentally instead of on purpose, okay?" Then he slapped a hand over his face, unable to believe he had actually ended a sentence using _Deidara's_ characteristic speech pattern. No question about it, the three of them had been in the same place for way too long.

The kid continued to protest until the Uchiha offered a cold-blooded analysis: "If he says to kill you now, we'll have to do it. If he says kill you now and you are not here, we have a chance to talk him out of it."

At that Deidara subsided with ill grace, although his eyes gleamed when he warned Itachi that he wouldn't roll over and play dead even if the Leader did order his demise. The Uchiha was completely indifferent to the not-so-veiled threat. Kisame just heaved a despairing sigh.

Seriously, when was the kid going to learn that they had his back?

That did leave the question of what do next. Kisame and the Uchiha had a plan, of course, one that they had discussed between themselves some weeks earlier. Deidara's 'rescue' forced their hand earlier than expected. Ironically, if the younger man had just stayed put and not acted on his own, the two of them might have been able to secure Sakura's freedom with a lot less drama.

Or been ordered to eliminate her permanently once she became redundant. The Uchiha considered that an acceptable risk; Kisame had still been trying to work out a way to improve Sakura's odds of survival when Deidara snatched the girl away and they were forced to improvise.

Fortunately once apprised of the situation, the Leader wasn't interested any permanent punishment for the kid, apart from ordering Tobi to resume his post as Deidara's partner. The Uchiha blandly agreed that was punishment enough. Kisame would have also concurred if he hadn't been so busy chortling at the imagined expression on Deidara's face when again confronted with his oh-so-annoying partner. The Leader was downright subtle in his sadism at times.

For all that he was such a methodical planner, Itachi was surprisingly good at improvisation. Kisame was impressed as the Uchiha carefully created the conversational path that was sure to leave the Leader with one inescapable solution…

All of them agreed on the 'vessel' part, just not that perfect chakra control was a requirement. Desirable, sure; jinchuuriki had tremendous amounts of chakra but could lose control, making one with _perfect_ control insanely powerful; _necessary_ , no. The Uchiha made points when he commented that Haruno was not from a shinobi clan and they didn't know if her ability was a bloodline limit or just a personal gift that would not be passed on to her children. The Leader, however, was not so willing to let go of the idea, and again reprimanded his followers for their laxity in allowing her to escape.

"We underestimated her," agreed the Uchiha.

"My fault," said Kisame. "I was mission leader. Turns out you don't need chakra to manipulate pressure points. Who knew. Deidara's fine. All he has is a small headache and a boatload of injured pride. He's out blowing stuff up to get over it."

"Is she pregnant?"

"I assume not," the Uchiha said blandly.

Kisame concurred. "Deidara says not. He's the only one of us with, ah, any insight on that situation. She's met up with the jinchuuriki. If you want us to follow, we'll need backup."

"More than Tobi," clarified the Uchiha. "There are other probabilities, however, that should be considered."

Kisame tensed. _Here it comes._

"Your partner," the Uchiha pointed out, "is female."

The Leader probably lifted an eyebrow, although through the haze of astral projection it was hard to be sure. "I am aware of that."

"Are you?" inquired the Uchiha as if it were the most natural question in the world. "She also agrees with the need for a vessel. And while she lacks perfect chakra control, she _does_ have a proven bloodline limit that _is_ heritable."

The Leader was silent although Kisame was sure that, somewhere in Rain Country, both his eyebrows were elevated to new heights.

"We still have time to retrieve Haruno and continue with the original plan, but we will have to do it with considerably less delicacy."

"It'll be a problem for other reasons," pointed out Kisame when the Leader remained silent. "Konoha will have her as closely guarded as that Naruto kid now. I'm all up for a fight, but that place has some pretty tough customers." His face suddenly lit up as he considered some of them: the copy-ninja Kakashi, the taijutsu expert Gai, two of the three legendary sannin. "Although it'll be a hell of a lot of fun…"

The Uchiha shot him a faintly reproving glance from the corner of his eyes.

The Leader's head turned as if he were listening to someone who was not part of their current psychic connection. "I will … take your suggestion under advisement," he said abruptly. "And I _will_ want to speak to Deidara next time," he added, turning back to regard them with a gaze that was a little _too_ knowing. The hazy apparition blinked out of existence.

Kisame heaved a sigh of relief. He looked at the Uchiha, smiling in satisfaction. "She'll do it. Apart from the fact she's been making moo-cow eyes at him for a decade, she agrees that it's necessary."

The Uchiha nodded.

"Which means the whole vessel thing is taken care of."

The Uchiha nodded again.

"They are probably going to send us after Leaf's jinchuuriki again. We'll have to fight against Sakura."

Another nod.

Kisame paused before asking, "Will you kill her if she gets in the way?"

The Uchiha cocked his head and glanced at him. "Of course," he said in mild surprise. "Nothing's changed."

"Of course," echoed Kisame with a sigh. "Too bad. I liked her. So, think we should drag Deidara to a brothel and let him get it out of his system?"

For a moment it seemed the Uchiha would not answer. Finally he murmured in a low voice, "No. Illusions can be pretty things. Let him keep his."

Kisame thought it was possibly _the_ creepiest thing he had ever heard the Uchiha say.

* * *

Being back in Konoha was very both disorienting and surprisingly normal.

For example, Sakura wasn't used to getting her own meals. Her first few days back she had to consciously remind herself that she wasn't being forced to remain in one room and if she wanted to raid the refrigerator at any time, she could. There were also no cold-eyed Uchihas or sharp-teethed water specialists preventing her from walking out the door of her own apartment whenever she wanted. It still took her a while to not feel as if she were taking her life in her hands merely by stepping outside her bedroom, let alone her apartment.

Also, after not using chakra for so long, being able to call it up at will was sometimes painful. Sakura's physical conditioning was as good as ever thanks to her training with the Akatsuki shinobi, but her chakra channels had thinned due to lack of use. Glasses would shatter in her hands because of unexpected surges she couldn't control; she once placed utensils on the table only to have the table's legs collapse from the force she unknowingly exerted. Tsunade assigned her to teach genin at the academy for a semester, ostensibly because it would be good experience for her, although Sakura knew it was because training the young students helped her re-train herself.

Yet all Sakura had to do was go outside to feel as if no time had passed at all. The marketplaces were the same, the people she saw at Ichiraku and the other ninja hangouts were the same, her parents and her friends were the same.

Team Kakashi was also largely the same, although Sai kept thoughtlessly asking how it was that someone with perfect chakra control kept having such embarrassingly uncontrolled surges. Sakura enjoyed whacking him in the back of the head after such comments. Turned out that he and Kakashi had been just as AWOL as Naruto, one looking for her in Sound and the other following up leads in Rain. Sai's undercover work in Rain had in fact been instrumental in leading Naruto towards her prison in the unincorporated lands between Sound and Lightning.

It was touching that the three men closest to her had risked becoming missing-nin for her sake. It didn't stop her from thumping Sai when he needed it or scolding Naruto for his lousy table manners or bemoaning Kakashi's addiction to reading porn in inappropriate places, but it was still touching.

A few days after her return to Konoha, there was a knock on the door. For a few minutes Sakura sat in her bedroom, not realizing that she should answer it. It was only when the knock came again, louder, that she remembered she would have to leave her room in order to see who was at the door. If she wanted to, that was. No punishment awaited her for either leaving her room or for _not_ leaving her room, apart from the ire of her unknown visitor.

Carefully she stretched out with her chakra, trying to find any clue as to her visitor. In an instant she was slamming the door to her bedroom open in her eagerness to let him in.

Naruto stood with one hand raised as it to knock again, but caught himself when Sakura pulled the door open. He put it behind his head and offered her a sheepish grin. "There you are! I was getting worried. Y'know, if you want to hide from all your well-wishers you're going to have to suppress your chakra. I could tell you were home."

"I keep forgetting I can go outside," Sakura answered honestly.

Naruto's hand dropped to his side, concern clouding his earnest blue eyes. "Like I said before, if you want to come stay with me for a while, that's fine."

No, it wasn't. It would remind her too much of having a keeper again, like when Deidara was always with her. She _needed_ to function on her own. Sakura didn't say that, instead insisting with forced lightness, "No, no, I'm fine! Come in! What do you have there?"

"Oh, this?" Over his shoulder was a duffle bag, much the worse for wear, with water marks and other stains that were hard to determine. "It's yours, or that's what Ibiki at ANBU headquarters said. They've gone through everything and determined nothing was a threat, so they're giving it back to you."

"Oh," said Sakura blankly. Her mind was pelted with sudden memories _clothes on the bed, nimble fingers, kimono rolled up, blood on the floor, scroll cases bleeding red_

"Sakura?"

She blinked. Naruto bent over as he gazed into her eyes. He was absurdly tall, taller than any other shinobi in the village. Hard to believe she had overtopped him when they first began training together. When his blunt fingers spread along her neck, however, likely the precursor to a comforting hug, Sakura stepped back hastily. She didn't like to be touched unless she initiated the contact. Tsunade said that was normal, that even though Sakura hadn't been assaulted she was in a situation where the threat of it was a daily occurrence, and it would be a while before she adjusted to being around men again.

She needed to get over it soon. She hated that flash of hurt in Naruto's eyes.

He pulled back awkwardly, hands hanging by his side. "Should I get rid of it?"

 _If only it were that easy,_ Sakura thought before realizing he meant the duffle bag. She waved one hand airily, smiling with false good cheer. "I'm not sure what's even in there. Deidara's the one that packed it. If ANBU didn't find any problems then I'm sure it's okay. Let's open it and see what's there."

By 'open it' Sakura meant 'unpack it carefully piece by piece'. Somehow that translated in Naruto's guy mind as 'upend it all over the sofa.' It took about five minutes for her to stop pummeling him on the shoulders and another ten for her to stop grumbling about the mess.

It was mostly clothing of the casual type, things she never wore while at the base because ninja garb was so much more practical. Naruto laughed as he shook out one dress. "I've never seen you in something like this! Did they have parties there or something?"

"I was told the person who bought all this stuff was a woman, their Leader's partner. Deidara thought she never got to shop for any female stuff and went overboard from years of repressed girly-ness."

Naruto gave her that assessing glance he thought Sakura didn't see, the same one Kakashi cast her way whenever she mentioned one of her captors. It was hard to explain that the situation had been more frightening than the men involved, especially when one of the men had been Uchiha Itachi, unquestionably the most terrifying person in recent Konoha history. After carefully smoothing the dress across the back of the sofa, Naruto went back to helping her sort through the mess. He gave an exhale of surprise when he picked up what looked like a bolt of white and green silk. "Wow, this is pretty!"

"Oh, it's the kimono. Roll it out, it's gorgeous."

He acted as if he were afraid to touch something so delicate, trying to use just the pads of his fingers so that his too-sharp nails wouldn't catch on the fabric. "Aw, it's stained, too bad," he said regretfully as he smoothed out one sleeve. There was a faint water mark on it, slightly darker around the edges.

Sakura had discovered the puppetry scrolls and was carefully lining them up on the coffee table. Tsunade was going to want those. Sasori's art books were piled on a corner. "Is it?" She sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. "Everything's going to have to be washed, that's for sure. Something's mildewed. Probably got drenched through when Kisame used that water attack of his."

That glance again. Tsunade knew the details of her captivity and escape, but Sakura hadn't told anyone else; Naruto didn't know that Kisame and the Uchiha tried to stop them at first.

Unexpectedly Naruto lifted up the other sleeve, trailing on the floor next to Sakura, and draped it over her shoulder. Startled, she rocked back on her heels as she looked up at him. "It'd look great on you," Naruto told her. He was gazing at her softly with _that_ expression across his face, the one they both pretended never happened because acknowledging it would strain their friendship. Then his expression changed as he said in surprise, "What's this?" and stuck his hand up the sleeve.

When he brought his hand back out, there was a little clay figure held in his palm.

Sakura's mouth formed an amazed 'oh.' Naruto didn't see it because he was staring at the figurine with childlike delight, as if it was a decade earlier and they were still genin. "It's a Sakura action figure!" he crowed. "That is so cool!"

 _"Also not art. But at least it's done, eh?"_

"Careful with that," said Sakura automatically. "It's more fragile than it appears." Deidara hadn't liked it, he didn't like anything if it didn't explode, and yet he'd used an entire _kimono_ to protect it.

"Can I have it?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, you can't have it! Give it here!"

"Aw…" Naruto handed it to Sakura with marked reluctance, pouting.

Getting to her feet, Sakura looked around the apartment. It was a bare place, as ninja abodes tended to be, more an area to camp out between missions than a real home. "Sheesh, I'm going to have to get a display case for it or something. And a stand for the kimono. And another closet for all these clothes! There go my next two pay checks." She put it on top of the TV for lack of a better place, sighing. By the time she found places for everything, her apartment was going to be a shrine to her captivity with the Akatsuki. It would be simpler just to throw everything away.

Except that wasn't even a possibility in her mind.

"Sakura?"

She was crying. Not sobbing or anything, there wasn't a single hitch to her breath, yet tears were streaming silently down her cheeks for no reason whatsoever.

"Hey…"

Whirling, Sakura grabbed Naruto and held on to him fiercely. Naruto was a solid person to embrace, that was for sure, so wide through the chest her arms couldn't reach completely around.

"So if I hug you back, are you going to pound me?" Naruto asked cautiously.

"Shut up and do it," grumbled Sakura.

Smiling tenderly, he did just that.

* * *

Night. Illumination from a full moon cast stark shadows across the training clearing, creating a world washed of colors, reduced to grays and blacks and whites.

Too much white, as far as Deidara was concerned. He had been raised in a harsh northern climate. If he never saw snow again it would be too soon, although the light coating gave rise to an even, neutral backdrop for his current creations. A series of hand seals and the tiny sculptures placed so carefully on the ground expanded, creating a private statue garden within the clearing.

 _A life-sized version of her in battle position, the way he had seen her that first time years ago, never knowing how important she was to become…_

Art was a bang.

 _"Katsu!"_

 _Her in the kimono that she never wore but he always wanted to see her in, kneeling gracefully with hands tucked inside the long sleeves, hair pinned up so her nape was bare…_

Love was a bang, too.

 _"Katsu!"_

 _Dripping wet hair framing her face, drenched clothes leaving nothing to the imagination…_

Love with her was a …

Deidara grinned.

She'd bop him over the head for finishing _that_ thought. And with her chakra unblocked, it would _hurt_.

It was over. The Akatsuki were abandoning this location, convinced that Konoha ninja would be overrunning it soon. He was being recalled to Rain and to his trying partner Tobi. The moment, all the moments that had existed here, were gone.

In the moment, it had been glorious. More than glorious, it had been _art_.

The moment was over. It would be time to create different art soon.

Deidara regarded the final clay statue with a happy smile. She was cute wet, no question.

 _" Katsu!"_

When the dust cleared, all that remained was an empty moonlit clearing.

* * *

The End

* * *

Notes and such:

Thanks to everyone who read and everyone who reviewed!

Remember: if a "bang" is what _you_ need, go to Amazon dot com and look up Safyre Starr's (that's me) novella "Going Up!"


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